


the ache in the empty

by atlantisairlock



Category: Military Wives (2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Mild Sexual Content, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:26:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27911479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: Kate is a first-year Education student in university; Lisa sings in a band and studies Music.Their love story spans thirteen years.
Relationships: Kate Barkley/Lisa Lawson, Kate Barkley/Richard Barkley
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	the ache in the empty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ensorcel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ensorcel/gifts).



> i have officially lost my fucking mind. i am going to join the circus. longest one shot ever. what am i doing??? 
> 
> title from 'her her her' by caitlyn siehl.

Kate doesn’t know why she goes to the bar that night.

If she were more of a romantic, she’d call it fate. She’s not, though, so she calls it a fact, and the facts are these - she’s three days into her very first semester and the five girls on her floor have realised she doesn’t leave her room except for classes and have become determined to change that. She says no about six times before looking at her stack of readings, realising it’s her father’s voice in her head talking and not her own, and deciding, impulsively - _why not?_

She’s not given to impulsivity, but she’s alone in London and her parents are hours away in Cornwall and it’s the first time she’s been this - free, to make her own decisions, without someone looming over her shoulder. Telling her what to do, where to go, what to feel. What to want.

She decides to want to do this.

The bar isn’t particularly her scene, if she’s being honest. It’s a little dingy and the wine is not good. She drinks it quicker than she ought to, keen to just finish it and be done drinking it, then feels a little awkward sitting at the table empty-handed while the other girls chatter uproariously about some lad on the ground floor of their apartment. Kate excuses herself quietly to get another drink, and they barely notice. Well. Colour her unsurprised. She didn’t come to university to make friends. Mostly because she’s pretty sure nobody’s interested in her friendship.

She gets a beer because she doesn’t recognise much else on the menu. She runs her fingers against the knots in the bartop, the noise around her blending together, _until._

“Your beer, honey,” says the bartender, but Kate doesn’t hear, because all of a sudden a beautiful voice is cutting through the relentless buzz in the bar. Kate whips around to stare at the stage, where the live band of the night has started their set. There are five of them, but Kate’s attention stays fixed on the vocalist. She’s front and centre, holding on to the mic and running her fingers through her hair as she sings the opening lines to Sweet Child O’ Mine. Her voice is incredible. She’s also possibly the most beautiful girl Kate has ever seen. Her beer is forgotten as she just watches the girl sing as the rest of the band plays behind her.

Nobody’s really listening, too occupied with their drinks and conversation, and Kate knows that’s supposed to be the point. But she wonders how no one can hear what she’s hearing. How it doesn’t stop them in her tracks.

The bartender nudges her hand and Kate remembers her beer; she takes it and moves towards the raised platform at the front of the bar where the band is playing. There aren’t any seats, but she doesn’t care. She feels like she could stand here and watch them for hours. Watch _her._

The girl notices her two songs in, directs a smile right at Kate that makes her mouth go dry. She sips her beer and tries to quell the butterflies in her stomach. She shouldn’t be feeling like this, and she knows it, but there’s just _something_ about this girl that draws her in. She looks so confident up on that stage, so self-assured. Comfortable in the spotlight. The master of her own fate. She looks _alive_ in a way Kate doesn’t remember ever feeling.

She doesn’t know how long she stands there, but eventually the girl wraps up Blue Suede Shoes and takes a long drink of water, then locks Kate’s gaze with hers. Her smile is a lovely, lazy thing. “One last song for the night, lads,” she says, and for the last time that night her voice fills the space, the only thing Kate wants to listen to. The girl doesn’t look away for a single moment during the song and Kate finds herself smiling back. It feels like - just for a few minutes - she’s singing just for Kate.

The song eventually comes to an end, and the band disappears off stage; Kate sighs and finishes the last of her now-warm beer. The bar seems a little dimmer now, far less interesting than it was before. When she glances back to her floormates’ table they’re still engrossed in conversation, showing no signs of having missed her presence. It’s midnight - might as well head home now. There’s not much left for her here.

“Hey!” A voice calls from her left, and a hand settles on her shoulder. Kate turns swiftly to shake it off, then stops in her tracks. It’s the vocalist, looking every bit as lovely as she did on stage. She’s smiling at Kate, but it’s a different smile now. Softer. This one is definitely just for Kate. “I saw you from on stage. Thanks for listening.”

“You were amazing,” says Kate. The girl laughs, sounding pleased. “Thank you. I’m glad you thought so.” She still hasn’t taken her eyes off Kate. “What’s your name? Are you from the London Met too? Seems like everyone who comes here always is.”

“Oh, uh, yes. Hi. Kate Charles. I’m doing my Education BA at the Met.”

“Wow. That’s a hard study. Good for you.” She extends a hand for Kate to shake. “I’m Lisa Vaugh. Music Tech and Production. First year. Well, first in Music - I was doing Business and Law last year, and then I realised I didn’t want to be miserable for the rest of my uni life. You stay nearby, Kate Charles?”

Kate blinks, a little overwhelmed by Lisa’s quick speech. She’s _bright_ and there’s a glow about her, an easy confidence Kate saw on stage that Kate’s realising she carries with her off of it. “I - yeah. First year,” she finally stutters out. “Um, yes. I stay nearby. Chapter Highbury, just a few minutes out.”

Lisa raises her eyebrows. “Damn. Fancy. Are the Thane Villas too lowbrow for you?”

Kate feels her hackles rise, just a little - the usual defenses bubbling to her lips, about how her parents might have money but she doesn’t want it, didn’t want to have everything about her university experience bar her degree decided by someone else, doesn’t want to be under her parents’ thumb but she doesn’t know what else she can do - until she hears the teasing in Lisa’s tone, and something sultrier that makes Kate’s heart stop for a second, her mind whirling. Lisa’s definitely not asking about real estate.

“I - no,” says Kate, then straightens up, trying to sound less like a deer in the headlights. Lisa laughs and bites her lip, and the sight makes heat rise in Kate’s core, something unfamiliar. She’s seen handsome boys back home - and some pretty girls, even though she knows they shouldn’t be the ones she’s looking at - but nobody’s ever stirred this feeling in Kate’s chest, nobody’s ever looked at her like she’s something they want. She’s so far from home and the alcohol is working through her system; she likes to think it’s making her braver. Lisa reaches out and runs her fingers against the back of Kate’s hand. “Well, that’s where I stay. If you’re interested. You’re gorgeous,” she murmurs, sounding like she means it. “I thought I’d take a chance.”

Nineteen years of her life and Kate’s never done this with anyone, never even considered it. If she were at home she’d know better. Going home with someone - with a _girl_ she’s literally just met, and Kate’s lacking experience in this but the intent in Lisa’s eyes is clear, and she can hear her parents screaming in her head. Telling her only stupid, cheap sluts on the streets sleep with any random person who ask them to come back to their room -

But she’s not at home. And Lisa is beautiful, and she’s gentle, her smile sweet, and she just waits patiently for Kate to reply. Looks at Kate like she doesn’t want to look at anything else, but doesn’t push.

She wants Kate.

Nobody’s ever really _wanted_ Kate.

“Yes,” she finally replies. “I’m interested.”

Lisa smiles, and her hand slips properly into Kate’s and squeezes. “Follow me. Let’s get out of here.”

Kate finds out a lot of things that night. She finds out she likes Lisa’s fingers inside her, likes when she goes slow, one by one, until Kate’s breathless from how full she feels. She likes Lisa’s mouth on her clit, and she finds out Lisa likes that too, that she’s good at it. Lisa goes on her knees easy for people and isn’t ashamed of it. Kate tells her, right before Lisa unzips her skirt and goes down on her, that she’s never had sex with anyone and Lisa doesn’t laugh, doesn’t say a word, just kisses her softly and tells Kate to stop her if Lisa does anything she’s not comfortable with. She’s gentle and goes slow until Kate whispers _more,_ until Kate comes against her mouth for the first time and begs _please, again, please._

Lisa pulls the covers over both of them after, when Kate’s sated and sleepy, and gives her that same jaunty, sweet smile she did at the bar. “Do you have classes tomorrow?” Kate shakes her head. “Great. Want to go out for breakfast in the morning? There’s a cafe a street away. Nice paninis.”

“All right,” Kate agrees. When she closes her eyes, she’s already looking forward to waking up.

Lisa ends up being the first friend she makes in university. She also turns out to be the best.

They don’t _date,_ of course. Their first night together is a casual thing, a fun thing - Lisa’s carefree attitude the morning after makes that very clear, and Kate’s not looking for a relationship. She has three years of school ahead of her and that’s priority number one. She’s already thinking long-term. Lisa tells her more about herself over the first breakfast they share and it’s obvious their career paths will take them very different places. Kate actually wonders for a while if their first rendezvous can even develop into an actual friendship because they run in such different circles.

But Lisa is unfailingly kind and charming and genuinely interested in what Kate has to say. She swaps numbers with Kate and invites her for study sessions, for shows. Kate attends her classes and settles comfortably into university life. She learns the area around her apartment. She figures out where to get coffee and groceries. She completes her assignments on time. She has short, stilted calls back home every fortnight and finds an excuse to hang up before conversation inevitably turns to what a waste of time and resources her education degree is. She acquaints herself with a few nice coursemates who she studies with sometimes, though she ends up studying with Lisa far more often. She attends the occasional show Lisa and her band play at.

Sometimes they hook up. Kate had been under the impression their first night was a one-off thing until three weeks later when they’re at the bar again and Kate’s enjoying the band’s setlist for that night with a gin and tonic in hand, and when Lisa hops off the stage after, she slides an arm around Kate’s waist and pulls her to her feet. “Want to come to my place?”

Kate remembers Lisa’s head between her thighs and the way Lisa’s fingers felt inside her and the answer comes easily to her lips. Their second hookup goes as well as the first, and then the third, and the next, and the one after that. It’s excellent stress relief, especially as both their workloads get heavier. University is definitely no picnic and she’s got no problem with admitting that the sex helps to take the edge off.

Lisa is the only person she hooks up with, mostly because they both seem perfectly satisfied with the arrangement and Kate doesn’t really want to invest any more precious time in seeking out new partners when she could be studying, or doing more readings, or having sex with Lisa. Lisa knows what she likes, and vice versa. They learn each other better with every night they spend together. Kate doesn’t see the point doing that all over again with someone new, especially when she doesn’t really _need_ it. Once every few weeks with Lisa, and then spending the rest of her time throwing herself into schoolwork and the rest of her university life.

Kate isn’t the only person Lisa hooks up with and she knows that too and that’s okay. They’re not exclusive, they’re not _anything._ Lisa has her own life to lead. Different assignments, different extracurriculars. But whenever Kate needs her, she’s there, whether it’s as a shoulder to cry on or a study buddy or a warm body in her bed. Kate doesn’t think she could ask for anything else.

She doesn’t tell her parents anything about her life at London Met. The most innocuous things she brings up about her syllabus or her pasttimes get weaponised against her when all she wants is to share all the fascinating things she’s learned, the new hobbies she’s picked up. She goes home for winter break and spends two weeks being passively-aggressively reminded by her father that he’s paying all her fees and she’d damn well figure out how to pay him back on a teacher’s salary when she graduates. Her mother doesn’t care that she’s made friends with fellow coursemates or that Lisa and her bandmate Asher have started teaching her how to play guitar; she pesters Kate incessantly about whether she’s met any nice boys who have bigger, more ambitious dreams than she does. Her parents have been overbearing all her life, but after a semester in university, learning to stand on her own two feet, learning so much about her passion, making friends who haven’t spent their lives in the same small town as she has, it all feels so much more stifling than it did just a few months ago.

She doesn’t go back for any more breaks; she doesn’t think her parents care. She stays on-campus for summer break after the end of her first year, spends time reading up in preparation for her second. With Lisa’s coaxing she goes out and explores the city a little more too. Lisa introduces Kate to her friends but also encourages Kate to catch up with her own.

Half her break is spent with Lisa - finding new hole-in-the-wall cafes to eat at, attending shows where Lisa shoulders her way through throngs of people to the front and drags Kate with her. Lisa slings an arm around Kate’s shoulders and screams along word-perfect to songs Kate doesn’t know but instantly likes. They drop by a little karaoke bar Lisa frequents; Lisa successfully coaxes her into dueting a song and tells Kate she sounded amazing even though Kate knows it’s a blatant lie. They visit history museums and art galleries because Kate likes them, and Lisa peers closely at the wall labels, listening earnestly when Kate happily explains the historical significance behind a tapestry on display at the British Museum. They spend nights at each other’s dorms when they feel like it.

The last day of summer break, when the student body has started streaming back onto campus and Kate has her new timetable drawn up and is all ready to begin her second year, Lisa takes her up to the roof of her apartment after an early dinner and they sit near the edge and watch the sun begin to set. They talk about everything and nothing for hours as the sky bleeds golden to black. Lisa sips beer and talks about how she doesn’t go home for breaks because her parents are neglectful and don’t want her there anyway. She tells Kate about her brother, five years older, who died in an accident when Lisa was two and how her mother’s spent her entire life making it extremely clear that she wishes it had been Lisa instead, that if one of her children _had_ to be taken from her it shouldn’t have been her firstborn, her darling boy. She leans against Kate’s shoulder and tells her about spending an entire childhood desperately trying to make up for being the one left behind - always pushing herself to excel in school, to be a model student, a perfect daughter. She’d skipped a grade in primary school, topped her class almost every year, successfully applied to do Business and Law at London Met at eighteen. She’d been fucking miserable a month in, somehow forced herself through the next semester, then made the mistake of telling her father about it when she’d gone home for her first summer.

“He said _I don’t care,”_ she tells Kate. “Just that. And they never have, you know. Not when I was the best student in my cohort. Or when I placed first in this songwriting competition I entered in secondary school. Or when I got accepted to university, and aced every fucking assignment even though I hated what I was studying. So I just… packed my things and came back here and decided, you know, if they don’t care, why should I? And I applied to the admissions office the very next day to switch courses.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kate says quietly. It feels inadequate but she doesn’t know what else to say. She thinks she could offer her own secrets in exchange, tell Lisa about how her father calls her useless and her mother calls her stupid, but the words turn to ash on her tongue and Lisa doesn’t push; Lisa never pushes Kate to give more than Kate is willing to. Lisa just shrugs with the barest hint of a smile on her face as she reaches for her pack and lights a cigarette. “I’m okay. Now I’m doing what I _actually_ want to do with my life. I can’t complain.” She puts an arm around Kate, taking a long drag and handing the cigarette over so Kate can share. “Playing at the bar some nights and doing campus shows is just the beginning. One day I’m really going to be a _singer._ Maybe I’ll sell out the Royal Albert Hall. That’s where I want to be.”

Kate believes it. Believes in her. Lisa’s voice is transcendent and Kate knows that one day the world is going to see her and revere her for it. Lisa squeezes her shoulder. “You’ll come to watch me sing, won’t you?”

“Every single show,” Kate promises. She keeps her arm around Lisa’s shoulders, and Lisa does the same. They sit there in silence, just watching the city pulse endlessly below them. Kate closes her eyes and thinks to herself how grateful she is that Lisa Vaugh is her very best friend.

Her second year - the first semester, at least - goes a lot like her first. The assignments are understandably tougher but by and large her routine stays the same. She spends most of her time in the same circle of coursemates she met in her first year, but still spends more of it with Lisa. They sleep together when things are particularly tough going and they need to let off steam. Lisa keeps juggling academics, commitments to the band, and a social life; it’s not easy, but she does it. Kate’s mother calls occasionally and Kate grits her teeth and tries to make ten minutes of conversation; she’s still her mum, after all. Life continues as usual. Nothing really changes.

She spends her second winter break exploring more of London - she compiles a checklist of interesting bookstores to visit and works through it with the kind of patience and determination Lisa tells her she admires but could never emulate. Lisa goes with her when she can, but they aren’t attached at the hip the way they were during summer; the band is getting more gigs and spending more time in rehearsals and Kate doesn’t begrudge her putting them first. The music world is where Lisa _belongs_ \- Kate loves education and is utterly certain that she wants to go out into the real world and teach, but Lisa loves music a completely different way. She loves it like Kate’s learned she loves everything else - deeply and all-consumingly, down to the very marrow of her bones. Lisa loves so very few things in her life, wary of giving her heart away after growing up in a cold house, but when she does, they etch themselves into her skin and never leave. Kate admires her for it. She’s not sure she has the strength for that kind of devotion. They still see each other frequently - Lisa plans around her schedule to make time for her and Kate does the same - but Lisa throws herself into the band with gusto and Kate just watches indulgently. She’s proud of her friend.

One thing stays the same - they sneak onto Lisa’s apartment rooftop right before classes start again, just like they did in summer. They drink and talk, and Lisa shows her some drafts of the original songs she’s trying to write, singing them so Kate can hear and give her thoughts. They’re pretty different from the material the band tends to play, which surprises Kate. They’re slow, sweet songs, mostly love songs, and Lisa’s voice is softer, gentler, when she sings them. Kate hums along once she grasps some of the melodies and it feels like honey on her tongue. Wondrous.

They stay on the rooftop for hours like that until it gets too cold to bear, then Lisa takes Kate back to her room, to her bed. It’s familiar and _safe_ and Kate feels content, waking up in the morning to head off to her first class. She expects her second semester to be exactly like her first.

She’s quickly proven wrong.

The love of her life intersects her universe in a guise she doesn’t recognise at first glance (or second; it doesn’t hit her until years later, _years,_ but - )

Richard is a new addition to Chapter Highbury, the room closest to the stairs, three doors from Kate. He smiles genially at the rest of the residents when they see him in the common area on the second day of the new semester, all curious about this new second-year moving in halfway through the academic year. His name is Richard Barkley, and he’s studying International Relations. He was staying in Bankside for his first year but decided he was sick of the thirty-minute Tube ride to school every time he had to attend classes and managed to convince his mother to let him move to Highbury instead. He’s soft-spoken and friendly, and Kate can see some of the other girls already eyeing him with interest, but his smile lingers on Kate and it makes her blush. Just a little. He doesn’t look at her the way Lisa did in that bar two years ago - not that same raw heat, that intensity - but there’s something in his gaze that isn’t there when he looks at the other girls. It makes her feel funny, her stomach flipping. It makes her go shy and nervous when he strikes up conversation on the stairs up to their floor.

He’s got a calm, steady way of speaking, grounded; he’s sure of himself and carries a confidence that would make Kate think of Lisa if it wasn’t so much quieter. He walks Kate to her door even though he’s literally across the corridor and wishes her a good evening. He’s a gentleman, he’s so unlike anyone she knew back home, and Kate can maybe, just maybe, hear her mother’s voice in the back of her mind, telling her this is the sort of boy she ought to be looking at.

She meets Lisa that night for dinner so they can talk about how this semester’s modules seem to be panning out, so Lisa can complain bitterly to her about an awful new lecturer she has who thinks he’s God’s gift to the university and talks down to every girl in the class. She thinks about Richard’s small smile and the way he held the door of the common area open for her, but she doesn’t tell Lisa about him.

She’s not sure why. Or why it feels strange. She doesn’t tell Lisa everything - if she’s being honest, she doesn’t tell Lisa much about herself at all. Kate knows so much about Lisa’s past and her dreams for the future, but Kate doesn’t think Lisa even knows whether Kate has siblings or where in Cornwall she comes from. So it’s not like there isn’t precedence. And Kate knows Lisa won’t know if Kate doesn’t volunteer the information. Lisa has never, ever probed, even when Kate knows she’s curious. She respects Kate’s silence but Kate also doesn’t know how to give things away without being asked for them.

She eats her chips quietly, listens to Lisa and lets her feel heard, keeps her mouth shut and ignores the voice in her head that nudges her to tell Lisa about Richard. She doesn’t.

Not that first night, at least. The thing is that Richard keeps coming around. Part of it is because they live on the same floor so it’s inevitable that she bumps into him ever so often, but Kate’s not so oblivious that she doesn’t realise he deliberately seeks her out. Always respectfully, always keeping things light and friendly, but it’s _really_ obvious his interest in her goes beyond simple friendship.

They do become friends first because Kate isn’t sure if she’s ready to jump into that, especially with her final year due to arrive in a couple of months. Things have been so good for the first half of her university experience, the routine she’s developed and stuck to like glue. She has no intention of adding a boyfriend into the mix without making sure it won’t throw the rest off-balance. And Richard definitely proves himself a good friend. He calls her Katie, the way only her grandparents ever did, but it sounds softer and lighter coming from him. Kate’s interested in history, which overlaps somewhat with Richard’s passion for international politics. He’s an excellent conversationalist - Kate finds herself increasingly spending time in the common area, readings forgotten in front of her as she gets into spirited debates with Richard about major political events in recent history. It’s so different from spending time with Lisa, and as the days begin to melt past, Kate wonders, and can’t stop wondering - if she could love him, if they could be something more than this.

She doesn’t do much more than think about it for a while; in the end, Richard still makes the first move, knocking on her door one afternoon and asking her if she’d like to go to Saturday’s inter-university Battle of the Bands with him. “I’ve got some friends competing, so I’m going to go and show my support.”

“Oh, me too!” Kate exclaims, surprised. “My best friend and her band are competing.” Lisa’s been particularly busy the past few weeks rehearsing with the band - it’s a pretty sizeable event, involving almost twenty universities in London, and hearing Lisa tell it, it’s _serious_ business. They’ve been building up a reputation playing at bars and doing small shows with other amateur bands, but placing at the Battle of the Bands could really give them a leg up. The band didn’t make it through selections last year and Lisa was over the moon when they got all the way through to finals this time; she’s determined to shine on stage and Kate promised she’d be right there cheering her on, no matter what. Richard beams at her, looking pleased. “Amazing. Shall we go together?”

“Oh - yes, sure,” says Kate, feeling the nervous knot in her stomach returning. _Is this a date?_ She wonders. She hopes Richard doesn’t expect more than just hanging out at the Battle of the Bands, like supper or drinks after; she’s already agreed to do that with Lisa after the prizegiving ceremony, and somehow she doesn’t really think Lisa would appreciate someone else tagging after them.

Well. She’ll deal with that if it comes up, she supposes. Richard just nods and smiles and agrees to meet her at the performance venue an hour before the doors open, and Kate waves him off as he heads back to his room.

The Battle of the Bands ends up being _amazing_ \- Kate wasn’t sure if she would actually enjoy it, hours of jostling with swathes of other university students in the auditorium listening to band after band strut their stuff on stage. But the atmosphere is dizzyingly incredible, strobing lights and feeling the reverb in her chest, and all the bands sound good. Richard gets them close to the front so Kate’s close enough to practically _touch_ Lisa when her band eventually takes the stage. Maybe she’s biased, but the moment Lisa opens her mouth to sing Kate’s certain she and the band are far and away the best of the lineup. A roar rises up over the auditorium after their song comes to an end and Kate joins it without a second thought.

“They were really good!” Richard shouts over the noise after the band leaves the stage; Kate jumps, suddenly recalling he’s there with her. She feels suddenly embarrassed that he saw her screaming her head off in support of Lisa, but he just shoots her a genuine smile. “The vocalist - was that your friend?”

Kate nods. Richard gives her a thumbs-up. “Her voice is amazing!”

“It is,” Kate whispers; she doesn’t think Richard hears her but it doesn’t matter. The next band takes the stage, one from a different university that neither of them recognise, and Kate listens but her thoughts linger on Lisa, on how brilliant and talented she is. She knows, no matter what the results are tonight, she is going to be so proud of Lisa, so proud it feels like her heart could burst.

Lisa’s band wins. Out of thirty finalists from eighteen universities across London, they come out as champions.

Asher and Yen are actually crying when they’re called on stage to receive their trophy and cheque and all that. Lisa’s got her arms around Ira and Thomas and she’s grinning - she looks like she’s on top of the world, pure joy on every inch of her face and Kate’s so happy she might have won first place herself. She heads backstage with Richard in tow once the event comes to a close - he leads them both through the crowd, hand circling her wrist so they don’t lose each other, and manages to push past the horde to the equally chaotic backstage area. Kate sees some photographers from the campus magazine snapping pictures of the top three bands, but the second Lisa catches sight of Kate she breaks away and runs towards her, flinging her arms around Kate and laughing breathlessly. “Kate, we won! We _won,_ we actually won, oh my God. I was shitting myself going on stage, I was _so_ scared, I can’t believe it - “

“I knew you could do it,” Kate replies, hugging her tight. When Lisa pulls back she’s smiling so wide and her makeup looks lovely and Kate is struck by the sudden urge to surge up and press a kiss against her mouth, to whisper how proud she is. She’s kissed Lisa before, made out with her in her bed with Lisa’s hands under her shirt, undoing her bra - hot and wet and insistent, but this feels different. This doesn’t feel like a lead-up to sex, which is where their boundaries have always been drawn, but she thinks, maybe, that Lisa would kiss her back -

“Congratulations,” says Richard from beside her. The moment is instantly broken. Lisa takes a step back and her arms fall back to her sides, letting go of Kate entirely. She directs her smile at Richard and it’s still bright but shadowed by confusion. “Hi. Thank you. You are…?”

Oh, right. Kate still hasn’t gotten around to telling Lisa about Richard; she’d forgotten about that. “Lisa, this is Richard. He stays on my floor. He’s got friends competing in the Battle of the Bands too.”

Richard shakes Lisa’s hand; she doesn’t stop smiling but there’s something off about it that makes Kate furrow her brow. Something in her eyes that flickers out so fast Kate thinks she imagined it. “My mates are from Goldsmiths, actually - not sure if you met them before the show? The Archers?”

“Oh, yeah! The lads with the harmonica, right? That was so fun and interesting, I loved that. Yeah, we chatted a little. Sucks that they didn’t place, they were excellent,” Lisa replies. She sounds exactly like she usually does, charming and friendly, making easy conversation even with someone she’s just met, and Kate pushes away the sudden unease springing up in her chest at that tiny shift in Lisa’s expression and body language a few moments before. Richard chats with Lisa, brings up the fact that he plays guitar - “I mean, nothing serious, not like you guys,” he says, which is the first _Kate’s_ heard of it. “You should come jam with us sometimes, we’re always looking for new people to join us - we play with the other bands on campus too, for fun, you’re welcome if you’re interested.”

They exchange contact details and then Richard spots his friends; he nods to Lisa and smiles at Kate, squeezing her shoulder. “I’m going to join my mates. See you back at Highbury?”

“Yeah - bye,” she says, and he’s gone, lost in the still-heaving throng of people backstage rushing around handling post-event takedown, leaving her alone with Lisa. And maybe Kate’s just imagining things, but her smile seems a little less radiant and Kate can’t help but feel like she put a foot wrong somewhere. Even though she doesn’t know why. She gives Lisa a slightly uncertain smile, wanting to feel surefooted again. “Drinks? We should celebrate.”

“And some supper. I’m starved. Let me just go say bye to the band, yeah? Be right back.”

“You sure you don’t want to ask them along?”

“Nah. I’ve seen them every day the past few weeks,” Lisa says. “I’ve missed you. Want to spend time with you. Maybe the whole night, if you’re up for that.”

“Always am,” Kate replies without thinking. Lisa laughs, like it’s a punchline. “Just wait right here. Two minutes!”

Things start changing.

Richard asks her out, more and more. He introduces her to his friends and they have group study sessions. He makes her coffee when they’re both pulling all-nighters in the common area. He gets along with Lisa, and that’s important to Kate; there’s no way she could even consider dating someone who can’t be friends with _her_ friends. He and some of his musically-inclined coursemates jam with Lisa’s band; he even joins forces with Lisa to coax Kate into singing with them once in a while. They all cheer and clap for her even when she absolutely _massacres_ Take A Chance On Me, because they are possibly the most supportive friends she could ask for. And very good at pretending she isn’t hopelessly off-key.

Summer break that second year is packed. She starts thinking about her dissertation, thinking about what she’s going to do after graduation. She spends time with her friends. She spends time with Lisa. She spends time with Richard and makes vague mentions about a new friend she’s met when her mother calls, then puts the phone down when her mother starts snooping about how wealthy he is. They do all the dumb, fun, usual things Kate’s been letting herself explore by Lisa’s side the past two academic years; for Kate’s twenty-first birthday Lisa gathers her friends - some of Kate’s coursemates, the band, Richard and his friends - and drags them to the karaoke bar where they all get disgustingly drunk and sing badly enough to kill the living and wake the dead. They all stumble back to Kate’s apartment after; some of them throw up in the bushes, Kate inclusive, and Richard holds her hair back while Lisa laughs and helps one of Richard’s friends off the fence against which he’s slumped. They all squeeze into Kate’s room, God knows how, and Kate falls asleep tucked between Lisa and Richard and Ira with the strange feeling that a switch has been flipped.

He’s the one to sneak himself out of the room in the morning, before the sun rises, bringing everyone tea as they wake up with horrible hangovers. Kate sips hers while Lisa continues to sleep pressed against her side, watches him hand out more warm mugs and thinks, wonders. Considers what it might mean to fall in love.

Third year creeps up on them; so does Kate’s dissertation. She’s decided she’s going to investigate the differences between primary-level English Language education in England versus Malaysia over the past thirty years - one of her coursemates is Malaysian and enthusiastically volunteers his help where he can. Richard’s dissertation runs along similar lines - geopolitical conflicts between some Southeast Asian territories or something equally incomprehensible to Kate - so they end up spending numerous nights together in the library, hunched over books filled with language so academic it takes her three tries just to read a single sentence. She grumbles about it to Lisa, who just grins and drags her out for drinks when she decides Kate’s cracked her brains over research long enough for the week. When she can, at least; she’s got her own dissertation to pore over too.

They still spend time together, but less and less. One night she and Richard stumble back to Highbury at three in the morning after desperately rushing out their initial proposals for their advisors, drowning themselves in coffee at the twenty-four hour cafe; he walks her to her door as usual and right before he leaves, he leans in and gives Kate a brief kiss that feels almost absent-minded, an afterthought that reveals the hidden depths of his feelings towards her, the ones he still keeps a respectful lid on. His lips are dry and she can taste a hint of double espresso, and Kate suddenly realises she hasn’t spent a night at Lisa’s since summer break. It’s the longest they’ve gone without sleeping with each other since first year and it didn’t even _occur_ to Kate, and she wonders if it should have. Richard shuffles off to his room and Kate feels the urge to call him back. To kiss him again, properly, this time.

When she wakes up the next morning her head hurts and she has to brush her teeth twice to get the sour taste of stale coffee out of her mouth. The memory of Richard kissing her slams back into her mind only after she gets some toast in her system; in the light of day, it makes her insides churn a little.

She’d wanted to kiss him back. She _had._ She doesn’t know why she clings to that. They don’t talk about it when they meet up after class for another study session - Kate’s not sure he even remembers, considering how tired they both were - but she doesn’t stop thinking about it.

She knows he wants to kiss her again, even if he doesn’t say it. She wonders what kissing him would be like. The only person she’s properly kissed is Lisa and she’s not sure that’s a good yardstick to compare against. Kate spends the entire study session trying to figure out how to broach the subject; she’s distracted when she reaches across the table for one of her good highlighters that Richard’s only gone and sneakily abstracted for his own use. Somehow or other her hand bumps his - he looks up, curious and questioning for a second, before a smile slants across his face and he links his fingers with hers. His hand is big and warm. Kate hesitates, then lets it happen - lets him hold her hand against the library table. She doesn’t get the highlighter back.

He walks her back, as he always does. Pauses outside her door and searches her expression. “Katie, listen,” he starts, sounding shyer than usual. “I know you’re not really looking for something _serious,_ and I understand that. You know I’d be totally happy taking things at whatever pace you’re comfortable with.”

 _I never said that,_ Kate almost replies; she really hasn’t, she’s not even sure where Richard’s gotten the impression she’s not looking for ‘serious’. She’s so close to being done with school, and she’s not nineteen any more. She does want stability, something solid to hold on to; the white picket fence, if you will. She needs to get a job, pay her father back, and it would be nice to bring someone home to her mother, finally get her off her back. She wonders if she’s been giving Richard that impression, how that even happened. She doesn’t reply because she isn’t sure what to say. Richard slowly reaches up to brush her hair off her face, fingertips lingering against her jaw. “I really like you,” he murmurs. “I hope you know that.”

She does. She likes him back too, though she can’t seem to say it. The silence stretches, until Richard leans in closer. He telegraphs every action before he follows through on kissing her. Kate doesn’t pull away.

He doesn’t kiss like Lisa. He doesn’t taste like her. He steps back after, quietly wishing her a good night and nothing more, and that’s not like Lisa either, but the ghost of his lips against hers remains for the rest of the night.

They teeter on some unnamed precipice for a while - circling closer and closer; he knows it, so does she. Halfway through the first semester they topple over one edge, the night they come back to Highbury frustrated after a very long and very unproductive day - Kate simply unable to get through the introduction of her dissertation and Richard frowning over the reams of his advisor’s red ink covering the second draft of his first chapter. They end up sharing a drink in her room, talking about how hard it is to juggle their dissertations with everything else. Talking, and talking, until the words eventually fade to quiet and the room is silent for a few beats, then Richard leans over and kisses her, more intense and insistent than he ever has. Kate kisses back more out of instinct than anything else, a little startled. They make out at the foot of her bed and his hand drifts to her thigh and Kate feels it, sharp and hot in her gut, the second she knows where this is going to go.

He’s so gentle. He does things _right_ \- keeps checking in with Kate, over and over, as he unzips her skirt one-handed, presses his mouth against the line of her collarbone and leaves soft kisses there. She stays his hand when he reaches for her blouse buttons, shaking her head, and he understands without her having to say more. He’s careful when he unbuckles his belt, places his jeans and Kate’s skirt on her chair, nice and neat. He leaves his shirt on and Kate fists at the fabric against his back when he lines himself up against her, when he slides in slow and careful. She bites down on her gasp, the slight discomfort that passes after a few moments; he’s only the second person she’s ever had sex with, the first man, and it all feels so different from every night she’s had with Lisa. It’s not - _bad,_ just not what she’s used to, especially the stretch, the heavy weight of him on top of her.

“Okay?” He asks softly, kissing Kate when she nods affirmation. Keeps kissing her as he fucks her, swallowing the quiet sounds she makes; he’s quiet, too, and that’s unfamiliar, so different from the way Lisa runs her mouth, the way she gasps with a hand threaded through Kate’s hair when Kate goes down on her. He goes a little harder, deeper, and Kate has her arms around him and keeps waiting for that moment, that starburst, the electricity crawling down her spine and settling in her core, the way it does when it’s Lisa in her bed instead.

It never arrives; it’s nice, it’s fine, it’s okay and that’s all - it’s okay. He comes and she does too, though it feels muted. The dull heat inside her doesn’t dissipate even after Richard rolls off her and gives her a sleepy smile, caressing her cheek and kissing her forehead. It’s so tender but all Kate can manage in return is a brief smile of her own. “You better head back to your room,” she says, before he can fall asleep in her bed. “Don’t want anyone catching us and making trouble. And you’ve got a 9AM class to wake up for.”

Richard groans, but it’s the groan Kate’s learned to mean he knows she’s right and he’ll do as she says. With a show of reluctance he eases off the bed and pulls his jeans back on, giving her one last kiss before he sneaks out. “Good night. Sleep well. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Kate nods even though she doesn’t think she’ll be getting much sleep at all. She lays on the bed, unmoving, staring at the ceiling and trying to unravel the weird, uncomfortable knot beneath her ribs. She feels, distantly, like she’s done something wrong, something _bad._ She clenches her jaw and tries not to think about how hollow she feels, like the dissatisfaction is burrowing deeper inside her and leaving an empty space she doesn’t know how to fill.

She lies motionless in bed for a good forty-five minutes before she caves, hopping into the bathroom for a very quick shower and changing into something comfortable. She locks her door behind her and takes the fifteen-minute walk until she reaches Lisa’s apartment, and knocks five times before getting an answer. Lisa looks startled to see her - no surprise, considering it’s an hour to midnight and they didn’t make any plans and they haven’t hooked up in _weeks_. “Kate? What’s up? It’s late.”

Kate swallows, feeling bad for bothering Lisa this late, but also wanting - _desperately_ \- wanting to feel Lisa’s hands on her, wanting _Lisa_. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“No,” Lisa says softly. “And you know I’ve always got time for you. What’s going on?”

“I need,” Kate starts, but can’t finish - what does she need? What’s gotten into her, why has she walked fifteen minutes to Lisa’s room uninvited after - she doesn’t know, she doesn’t _know,_ and Kate just throws it all away, just steps in close and goes for something she’s sure of, kisses Lisa right on the mouth and pushes into her space. “Lisa, I need - “

“I know what you need,” Lisa murmurs. Low and gravelly and already pulling Kate past the threshold, tugging Kate’s shirt over her head, one fluid, easy motion borne from months, years of practice. Lisa manoeuvres them onto the couch, hooks her fingers in Kate’s waistband and drags her pants down to her ankles and gets her mouth on her, and Kate’s coming _hard_ within five minutes and already ready for more. Lisa fucks her right there on the couch and Kate returns the favour, has them both panting and crying out and it’s all just so familiar, practically muscle memory, called back so easily even after such a long time apart. It’s so good, and Kate doesn’t know how Richard could possibly compare and she hates herself for thinking that.

She’s falling for him; she knows they’re so close to being something _more than_. If he asked her tomorrow she’s pretty sure she’d say yes. She thinks he wants to and he’s just waiting for the right time. They’re practically a couple at this point in everything but name, when she thinks about it. It scares her - because of how much she wants it and doesn’t, at the exact same time. Her mind feels all jumbled up. She came into university three years ago, so sure of what she wanted, what she was doing, where she was going. None of that is clear any more. It’s a constant, ceaseless roar in her head that keeps her awake at night, and the only time it shuts up is when Lisa puts her hands on her and everything else fades away.

Lisa pulls them off the couch, starts leading them to her bedroom, and Kate feels it all coming back. She’s reminded, suddenly, of what she didn’t think about when all this was still beginning - the reality that this would have a deadline. Kate can’t spend the rest of her life running to Lisa’s door every time she needs to take her mind off the world for a few hours. That’s a _uni_ thing, something she can indulge in so long as she’s just another student on the campus, but she won’t be a student forever. She can’t have Lisa forever because that’s not how it works, but she could have Richard, who is kind and generous and courageous and who Kate is trying, desperately, not to see as second-best. He’s everything she could possibly ask for and she’d be lucky to have a forever with him. She would.

Forever, Kate thinks, her stomach sinking. That’s a really long time.

“Kate,” says Lisa, her voice like silken thread pulling Kate out of her reverie. They’re in her room, Lisa shutting the door behind her and looking at her, concerned. “Are you okay? You’re a little pale.”

Kate looks back at Lisa and tries not to think about forevers. Tries to focus on just this one night. Doesn’t respond, just tugs Lisa into another kiss and into bed, so Lisa can keep touching her, and make Kate forget about everything else.

She starts sleeping with Lisa again, with even more regularity than she did back in first year; it’s like that night broke whatever invisible barrier had been keeping them apart. She’d forgotten how much she needed it, how good it was to lose herself in the sex when things got stressful. They’ve still been hanging out, been doing everything else they’ve always done as best friends, but it’s just not the same. _I missed this,_ Kate admits one night, and Lisa laughs and replies _then don’t go that long without fucking me again,_ and Kate feels her mouth go dry and she just rolls Lisa over and straddles her face so Lisa forgets about her responding.

She hasn’t stopped sleeping with Richard either. It’s not as good and not as regular and she doesn’t tell Lisa any of it. Some nights it feels like cheating even though she hasn’t made anything exclusive with Richard yet.

They don’t get there until winter break, her final one as a London Met student. Lisa and the band take off to do a bunch of gigs in Ireland, something they set up after the Battle of the Bands, apparently. They hook up again right before she leaves - rough, quick, Lisa bending Kate over her breakfast bar - and in the heat of the moment, Lisa leaves a mark along her hip, almost like a lovebite. It’s still there the night Richard takes her out to a _ridiculously_ fancy restaurant for dinner and asks her to be his girlfriend. Officially.

“I thought you were going to propose,” Kate says drily, because her heart is hammering in her chest and going with snark seems like the best way to stall. “Bringing me to the Four bloody Seasons without any prior warning - I’m dressed like I’m off to class, Richard. Jesus.”

“You look beautiful,” he says, so earnestly and sincerely Kate can’t sass back. “I wanted this to be special, Katie. It’s important to me. _You’re_ important to me. We’ve been… good together, I think. I’d really like to be able to call myself your boyfriend.” He takes a deep breath, fiddling with his fork; he’s just a year older than her but he’s always been so put-together, so intelligent and mature, but right now, he just seems young. Rendered nervous in front of her, because of her. “I don’t want you to feel - pressured, okay? If this isn’t what you want, just tell me, and I’ll never bring it up again, I swear. I really am happy just being friends - with benefits, without, whatever. But I needed to ask, Katie. I had to take the chance.”

 _Say yes!_ Her head screams, all her rationality, her good sense. He loves her, she cares about him, and it feels like the neat, tidy conclusion their year-long friendship has been building up to. Of course she should say yes. What other option is there?

 _Lisa,_ whispers a lone, quiet voice in the back of her mind. The tiny, reckless, idiotic part of her that lights up every time she sees Lisa laugh, every time Lisa puts an arm around her. Kate digs her fingernails into her palm and tries to swallow down the lump in her throat. She has loved Lisa since the very first time she watched her sing in that bar three days into university life.

 _You love her,_ the voice insists, trying to make itself heard. _You always have -_

 _Not like this,_ Kate says firmly to herself, then reaches across the table to squeeze Richard’s hand. “Of course I’ll be your girlfriend.”

And his smile is blinding when she says that; he looks so incredibly happy and it makes Kate smile too when they tuck into their food. The relentless fluttering in her stomach is joy. She knows it.

Lisa makes it back to campus a week before winter break ends; her advisor is hopping mad that she’s missed a self-set dissertation-related deadline but it’s evident Lisa could care less when she tells Kate about all the places they played in Ireland, the heady rush of driving here, there and everywhere, five of them against the world. “Best weeks of my life,” Lisa declares. “Could’ve done that _forever.”_ She tells Kate how her advisor should frankly be grateful because the trip inspired her to consider a new perspective on her dissertation. She starts rambling excitedly along that tangent, and it sounds fascinating, but Kate can’t focus.

It’s strange. They’ve done this so many times, sitting in Kate’s dorm talking about whatever’s on their mind, but today feels different. It’s been almost two weeks since she’s started dating Richard and it’s felt almost the same as when they were friends, just that he holds her hand whenever they go out and he calls her his girlfriend in front of his mates now, and Kate knows that she has to tell Lisa but the first three tries, the words don’t come. Her fingers twist in her lap and half of her screams _just say it_ and the other half warns _don’t,_ and she can’t figure out which one to listen to, which one is right -

“I’m seeing Richard,” she eventually blurts out, in the middle of Lisa’s sentence about glam rock being the zeitgeist of the seventies’ rock scene. Lisa stops talking immediately - and she doesn’t flinch, or wince, or anything like that, but there’s an infinitesimal twitch along the upturned curve of her lips. Something Kate knows would go unnoticed by most people, and she thinks it should be stranger, how well she’s learned to read Lisa, how she can pick up on the tiniest tells. Something flickering in Lisa’s eyes for the briefest moment, before she shoots Kate her trademark lazy, mischievous grin. “Same here, babe. I see Richard all the time. At jam sessions, at the karaoke bar, on the way to class…”

_“Lisa - “_

“I’m joking,” she says. She gives Kate a friendly shoulder-nudge. “Damn, you really went and got yourself a boyfriend in the two and a half weeks I was away? Good for you, Kate. You could do worse.”

 _Thanks,_ Kate tries to reply, but instead - “I - I’m really _seeing_ him now. Which means we have to - whatever’s been going on between us, it has to stop.”

“Yeah. I got that,” Lisa replies wryly. “I mean, we both knew it was sooner or later, right? We’ve just been having fun. Just casual, you know, letting off steam?”

“Yeah,” says Kate, barely above a whisper. She realises her fingers are curled together in a tight fist, knuckles white against the cold tile of her dorm floor. “Just fun. Exactly.”

Lisa hums in agreement, then gives Kate a wink. “It was great while it lasted, Kate. Seriously. It’s been some fucking amazing sex these past two years, I’m not even kidding. You’re really, really good with your mouth,” she murmurs, dropping her voice to that octave that makes Kate shiver a little, still. “Richard’s a lucky guy.”

Kate doesn’t reply, a pit seeming to yawn wide in her stomach. She leans over so she’s covering Lisa’s body with her own, left hand bracing herself steady as she slants her mouth over Lisa’s, the feeling so familiar it feels encoded in her bones now. She wonders if she’ll ever know Richard’s kiss as well as this; it’s only been two weeks but it still feels like she’s figuring him out, every time. “One last time?” She asks, not letting herself think too hard about it; she’s always thinking with her head, except when she’s with Lisa, and this feels like the perfect moment to let go of all of that and just _do._ “It can be, like, a goodbye.”

Lisa snorts, but good-humouredly. “Don’t be so morbid. Jesus, _goodbye…_ nobody’s dying. And we’ll still be friends even if it’s Richard you’re sleeping with and not me, right?”

“Right,” says Kate, but Lisa’s pulling her closer anyway, settling Kate in her lap and pressing her mouth against the exposed skin between her undone top buttons and reaching under her skirt, between her thighs. Kate loops her arms around Lisa’s neck and buries her face in her hair as Lisa begins to fuck her, slow and gentle and intense the way Kate likes. Three fingers buried deep in Kate’s wet cunt and Kate thinks about being in Richard’s lap instead, thinks about Richard, period, and a tiny, tiny voice in the back of her mind says _Lisa, please don’t let me do it. Tell me to stop seeing him, tell me to -_

Then Lisa’s thumb is on her clit, Lisa’s teeth graze her throat, and Kate is panting and clenching and there’s only one name in her mind, one name in her mouth, “Lisa, Lisa - _Lisa - “_

“Gonna miss this,” Lisa murmurs, muffled against Kate’s shoulder, so quiet Kate almost doesn’t catch it. Shuddering to her climax riding Lisa’s hand with her mind blissfully blank.

They don’t leave her room for hours, and by the time they’re both completely wrung out, it’s late and Lisa hurriedly pulls her clothes back on so she can head back to her dorm. She turns down Kate’s offer to walk her home, just gives her a grin and a kiss on the cheek before she heads out. “See you soon. Good luck with your dissertation, Kate. You’re going to fucking crush it.”

She turns away and disappears down the hall and Kate watches her leave, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that a chasm has opened between them, one she can never bridge. The feeling that something has irrevocably ended tonight. The panic is a sudden hand around her throat, and for a split second everything, _everything_ in her screams for her to chase after Lisa. Pull her in and kiss her and kiss her and never stop.

In another life, one where she’s braver, where she doesn’t have the spectres of her parents’ expectations weighing on her shoulders, where Richard isn’t a factor at play, she runs and catches Lisa before she can leave. In another life she wraps her arms around Lisa and throws all caution and common sense to the wind and gasps out _I love you, I love you, I love you. Stay with me, I want you, I have only ever wanted you._ In another life, Lisa kisses her fiercely and clings tight to her and says _I love you too, you’re it for me, I want you, I want you for the rest of my life._

In this one, it’s nothing but the exact goodbye she feared it was going to be.

Her very last semester at university is basically consumed by her dissertation. Her advisor pushes her harder at every meeting, telling Kate she _knows_ Kate can be one of the best in her batch and possibly turn out something worthy of publication sometime down the road. “Have you considered pursuing further study? You’d do well in academia, Kate,” she says, and Kate bites the inside of her cheek and tries to keep her gaze steady. She’s thought about it. In a perfect world - but it’s not a perfect world and she thinks her father would never speak to her again if she went on the pursue a Masters instead of going out and getting a job. Richard’s not planning on further study - he tells her he’s been looking at enlisting as an officer for a few years now, that his IR degree was always meant to be another step on the journey towards that. He’ll be working, serving the nation, earning his keep, and Kate can practically hear her mother tittering about making sure he has a hot dinner to return to every night, a wife that knows her place. She doesn’t think Richard thinks the same way but she also doesn’t think she wants him to have to feel obliged to spend another two years helping her pay off her Masters. No, academia isn’t the path she’s decided to walk.

If she’s not working on her dissertation, she’s with Richard - sometimes both at the same time - which feels like what she’s supposed to do, as his girlfriend and all. It’s nice enough, and her workload sufficiently distracting, that nothing else really registers for months on end. By the time it does, it’s already too late.

It’s not that Lisa disappears completely off the radar all at once; if Kate thinks hard enough she remembers them passing each other by on campus while on the mad rushes to advisor’s meetings and morning lectures, waving hurried goodbyes to Lisa when she grabs coffee at the cafe before heading back to her room to get more of her dissertation done. But a week before her deadline, while she’s hunched over her desk rewriting the first paragraph of her conclusion for the fifth time, one of the Music Tech students pops his head into her room and waves an envelope at her. “Hey. You’re Kate Charles?”

“What? Oh, uh, yes, what is it?”

“Letter for you from Lisa. Here you go.”

“A letter?” Kate frowns, getting up to take it from him. “Why didn’t she come give it to me herself?”

The lad gives her a quizzical look. “She buzzed off to Ireland two days ago. With the rest of her band - Tom and Ira and Ash and Yen; you know them?”

“I - yeah - what? _What?_ Ireland? Two days ago?” _Two days?_ Lisa’s been gone two days and Kate didn’t know? A chill grips Kate’s heart like a vice.

She left, and she didn’t tell Kate?

“I think they got an offer to open for this big band that’s touring right now or something nuts like that. So yeah, they’ve taken off. Guess that’s what the letter’s about.”

“Right,” says Kate, feeling numb. She barely manages to whisper a quiet thank you before accepting the letter and stumbling over to her bed once she shuts the door behind him.

Lisa must have known. Dissertations across the college aren’t due for at least a week; more for some faculties. The band must have sought permission to submit remotely or just handed theirs in early, and either way, Lisa must have known. And Lisa didn’t say a word, just took right off to Ireland and left Kate a _letter._ A fucking letter.

With trembling hands, Kate opens it, pulling out a single sheet of paper filled with black ink, Lisa’s familiar handwriting. _Kate,_ the letter begins. _Sorry I had to rush off without saying goodbye. This whole tour thing got sprung on us with no warning, and it was a huge chance. We all knew we had to take it. It’s what we’ve dreamed of (well, for starters), and I think you of all people know how I couldn’t possibly say no._

The next paragraph goes into some detail of the headlining band, tour dates, locations, but the words start to blur together through Kate’s tears. She clutches the letter so hard she almost crumples the paper in her hand. _She’s gone,_ she thinks, the only thing rattling around in her mind. _She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone_ -

The letter ends with _write me,_ accompanied by an address in Ireland. _Yen and I rented a place for after the tour ends. We’ve got plans and we’ll definitely be sticking around here a while. Come visit if you can, although I know you’re busy with Richard and all._

In smaller, neater handwriting, right at the bottom - _I miss you already, Kate. No matter how far apart we are, I’ll always be thinking of you._

Kate doesn’t know how long she sits there just staring at the letter and crying, sobbing her eyes out, until suddenly Richard is kneeling on the floor in front of her trying to slip the letter from her grasp and cupping her elbow with his other hand, looking scared and concerned. “Katie? Katie, what happened? What’s wrong? You’re scaring me - _Kate,_ you’re scaring me, please, tell me what’s going on - “

She finally loosens her grip on the letter enough for Richard to take it and carefully lay it on her side table, then collapses into his embrace. She cries into his shoulder so she won’t have to look at him. “Lisa’s gone,” she chokes. “She went to Ireland with the band and she didn’t tell me. She didn’t say _anything,_ Richard, she just left.”

Richard sighs, tightening his arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Katie,” he says softly. “I know she was your best friend.”

Something dark and angry and irreparably broken inside her screams _I loved her, you idiot! I loved her, I_ love _her, and I think this is my fault, I think if she had known she would have asked me to go with her, and if I wasn’t such a coward I would have said yes -_

“She left,” Kate whispers, and thinks about how Lisa’d said they would still be friends. How their last time together wasn’t a goodbye. How that didn’t turn out to be true, and how this time, she knows she’s never going to see Lisa again.

Once upon a time, she’d been young and fresh-faced and still untouched by the trials and tribulations of university life and Lisa had been the first friend she’d made and they’d do everything together and it felt like it would always be that way, it would always be her and Lisa against the world, even though she’d known even back then that it couldn’t last forever.

She only got three years.

And now Lisa’s gone and Kate can feel it like a wound in her side, gaping, bleeding, something torn from her and leaving her empty. All she has left is Richard and he doesn’t feel like he’ll ever be enough to patch the crevices opening up in her heart. Lisa filled something in her she didn’t realise was missing, and now Kate will always have a gap inside her. A blank space that will remain empty until her last breath.

He’s all she has left, and Kate tries hard to push away the voice in her screaming _it’s not enough._

Only it becomes forced to be enough, right after she ends her time at London Met forever. She turns her dissertation in and Richard takes her to dinner to celebrate. They help each other move their things out of their rooms, and Kate says a fond goodbye to Highbury. She’s come to know it as home for three years, and she’ll miss it. But it’s time to go back to her real home.

She brings Richard with her; he’s keen to meet her parents now they’ve been dating for a while. He gets his things sent home by a professional mover, then takes the five-hour drive with her all the way back home.

It goes well, initially. He’s nicely dressed and speaks intelligently and Kate can _see_ her mother’s approval written all over her face, especially when he lets slip that his parents both work in law and are relatively well-off. She’s pretty sure he’s what her parents would call a _catch._

Then her father asks him if he’s planning to follow his parents into law too. Richard smiles and shakes his head. “I’m enlisting in the Army - I submitted my application become an officer a week ago, actually.”

Her father’s expression morphs into an ugly sneer that makes the back of Kate’s neck prickle. “So you’re just another glory-seeking fool taking the easy way out, then? Can’t find a _real_ job in the civilised world, so you’re off to waste your university education on being bitch to queen and country? I’d thought you were a little too good for our Kate here, with her worthless _education_ degree, but it seems you’re perfect for each other after all.” He snorts, giving Kate a filthy stare. “I pay for you to go to university, to get a job that can actually pay your bills, and first you take a useless degree and then you find a man as _useless_ as _you_ \- “

Richard’s gone stiller and stonier with every word spat at his feet, but he jerks to his feet at that last line, giving Kate’s father the coldest look she’s ever seen Richard wear on his face. “Don’t call her that,” he says, eerily calm. “Don’t you dare say all that shit about her - your own _daughter,_ aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Kate’s father opens his mouth but Richard just carries on, tone almost placid and _terrifying_ with it. “Kate’s brilliant. Smarter than anyone I know, including - _especially_ \- myself. She’s hardworking and driven and dedicated and one day when I ask her to marry me I’ll know I’m the luckiest man on the planet if she grants me the privilege of saying yes. You can say whatever you like about the military - God knows most of it is true - and you can say whatever you like about me. But don’t you _fucking_ dare shovel that shit on Kate. She’s a better person than you ever will be.” He turns to Kate, ignoring her parents’ incensed gasps, reaching out for her hand. “Come on, Katie. Let’s go get some dinner? I thought I saw a nice little cafe on the way here.”

“Katherine Charles, if you walk out of my house with this man you can forget about _ever_ returning, do you fucking hear me,” her father roars, loud enough to shake the foundations of the house. Her mother wrings her hands and wails something like _how could you_ and _I thought I raised you to make better choices_ and Kate thinks dully about how convinced she’d been that Richard was the safe option, the one that would have garnered her parents’ approval. She wonders what Lisa’s parents think about her being on tour in Ireland right now. If they know or care that their daughter is going _places,_ en route to greatness. She knows Lisa doesn’t give a shit regardless - that Lisa realised they didn’t love her and decided she was worth more than spending a lifetime fighting for them to change that when she could love herself instead.

Her parents have never loved her for who she is and Kate thinks she can admit that to herself now. Lisa did, but Lisa’s gone. It’s just Richard now. Richard, who holds his hand out for her to take and who stood up for her and who talked about _marriage._

If she doesn’t go with him right now, who else does she have left to her?

 _I bet Lisa would have punched my dad,_ Kate thinks idly as she slides her hand into Richard’s. He doesn’t say anything more, just leads her back out through the front door, dragging her still-unpacked suitcases out with him. He silently puts them back in his trunk and they drive off, leaving her parents’ furious raging behind them. Kate knows she’s never coming back, and she thinks this might be a goodbye she’s not too upset about.

They end up sharing a pizza in the tiny pizza place Kate’s grown up eating at. They don’t talk as they quietly finish four slices each.

“I think we should get married,” says Richard, once his plate is clean, in the tone of voice he uses to talk about the political factors involved in UK laws on recycling.

“I don’t think I want to accept a proposal in a pizza parlour,” says Kate, because she’s learned she’s quite good at stalling for time in restaurants when she’s panicking about how to answer difficult questions. Richard laughs but it sounds a little flat. “After I become an officer I’ll be stationed on a base, and I want you there with me,” he continues. “And also because your parents are arseholes, and I love you and I want you to live with me.”

Kate fiddles with her knife and doesn’t respond for a minute. They’ve been dating for six months, for Christ’s sake. She was fucking Lisa about four times longer than that. Her _dissertation_ took longer to complete than that. She’s twenty-two years old and jobless and effectively homeless and there’s a part of her that’s still thinking about her best friend, running around Ireland living the dreams Kate was always supposed to watch her achieve.

“You don’t have to say yes now, Katie. I know it’s a big commitment. But come back with me, at least. Move in with me. I’ve got more than enough space in my flat.”

“As if I’ve got anywhere else to go,” Kate replies, more viciously than she intends. Richard’s face falls and she regrets her tone immediately. God, what is she doing? He cares about her, he loves her, enough to offer up his _home._ He’s so important to her regardless of everything else on her mind and why is that not enough? Why the hell is that not enough for her? She doesn’t understand and she hates herself for it. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Richard, I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just… tired.” She sets her knife back down. “Do you really want me to move in with you?”

“Yes,” he replies. No hesitation. It makes Kate feel like maybe she shouldn’t hesitate either. “Okay. I’ll move in with you. And we can discuss the whole ‘getting married’ thing later.”

“Okay,” Richard agrees. “Finish your pizza. We’ve got a long drive back to London.”

Richard has a small flat in Hounslow, twenty minutes on foot from his parents’ place. It’s where she installs herself while he goes off to Sandhurst for what amounts to an entire year. Kate finds a job at a nearby primary school, covering another teacher while she goes on maternity leave, then does well enough to be kept on as a relief teacher when she returns. She keeps house, visits Richard’s parents often in lieu of Richard himself. They’re very busy so she doesn’t get to see them often, but when she does they’re so much kinder than she remembers her parents ever being. There’s a note of pride in his mother’s voice when she talks about him at officer training, and his father asks Kate about her degree and her work and listens with genuine interest when she answers. When Kate thinks about marrying into a family, she thinks she could do worse.

Richard is far and away the best of his commissioning course. He receives the Sword of Honour and everything. Kate’s there with his parents when he commissions and it feels like it did watching Lisa and the band place first at the Battle of the Bands years ago. She’s so proud it feels like she could burst.

He asks her to marry him the very next day. Properly, this time; he takes her to the Four Seasons again and goes on one knee in the gardens. It’s so reminiscent of the night he asked her to be his girlfriend and of course she says yes this time round too. It feels like a tick in a checkbox - the right thing, what she knows she should do.

They go back to his parents’ place after to tell them the news; his father cries and his mother hugs Kate tight and doesn’t let go until Kate’s laughing about how she can’t breathe. The elegant diamond ring Richard slid on her finger sits neatly on her hand, a weight she knows she’s going to have to get used to.

It’s been more than a year now since she’s seen Lisa, let alone talked to her - she has no idea where Lisa is or what’s going on with her life other than being fairly certain she’s no longer on that initial tour after that many months. She wonders why it’s Lisa she lingers on when they return home that night, when she removes her ring and sets it safely in her jewellery box before she sleeps. If Lisa were here, Richard would have roped her in for the proposal, she’s sure. Lisa would have been there watching Richard ask Kate for her hand, watching Kate say yes. The thought makes her chest go tight. She hasn’t written Lisa, not even as a response to that very last letter, but something about today prompts her to reach for notepaper after Richard goes to bed.

She doesn’t say much - _how are you, how’s the band, what’s going on with you now, Richard proposed, we’re planning on a summer wedding, wish you were here, I miss you, I miss you every single day, with every breath I take, and I never stop wondering how different things would’ve been if you’d stayed, if I’d chased after you that night_ -

She stops short before she can write _I love you still._ Shreds the paper and gets a new sheet and keeps her sentences short and to the point, tucks the letter into an envelope and sets it out to post the next day.

She never gets a reply (she never stops waiting for one).

The wedding is a quick and simple affair. Richard’s parents insist on sponsoring venue costs and pick a lovely church near the London Met because Richard likes the symbolism and sentimentality of it. The pews are only half-filled and it’s mostly Richard’s family and friends, with some of Kate’s university coursemates and a spare handful of friends from Cornwall she kept in touch with. None of her family, and Kate finds she’s okay with that.

Lisa doesn’t respond to the wedding invitation Kate mailed her way and that’s… less okay. It makes her wonder if Lisa moved somewhere else, or if she just isn’t interested in speaking to Kate any more. She knows Lisa’s probably busy chasing her dreams and Kate likes to imagine she’s recording music in a studio with the band, touring around Ireland in concert halls she’s never heard of, and maybe it’s just that. Maybe she just doesn’t have the time or the energy to spare on Kate. If she’s being honest, she hopes it’s that, and not just because a rift has opened up between them and their friendship has turned to indifference and resentment on Lisa’s end.

The morning of the wedding, a flower arrangement arrives, surprising Kate. It comes with a card, and the moment she opens it and sees that handwritten script, she knows.

_Congratulations and best wishes. All my love, Lisa._

There’s all the usual suspects in the arrangement - calla lilies, irises, roses. Amidst them Kate finds heliotropes and zinnia and rosemary. She breathes in the scent, brushes her fingers against the writing on the card. Lisa didn’t write _wish I was there,_ but Kate imagines it anyway. Richard is with his father, and Kate’s supposed to get her hair and makeup done in three minutes, but for a brief moment she holds the card to her heart and thinks about Lisa standing at the altar waiting for Kate. She thinks about the flowers forgotten, Lisa barging into the church with all the reckless abandon and self-confidence Kate’s always loved and admired her for, grabbing Kate’s hand. Asking her to run away with her the way she didn’t when Kate first told her she was seeing Richard. She can hear it in Lisa’s voice, clear as day, even after all this time, even though Lisa’s never said the words. _Come with me, Kate. I love you. I want you. Don’t marry him. Choose me._

If she were braver, then.

If she was braver, _now_ \- if she were a better person, Kate thinks she would go to Richard and call the wedding off. Tell him she loves him, she _does,_ she adores him and she’ll always care about him, but she can’t do this, she can’t stand in front of him and say her vows and really, truly mean them with all her heart. She’d fly to Ireland and go to Lisa’s address and knock on her door and figure it out from there.

But her life isn’t a fairy tale, or a romantic comedy. And she doesn’t think she’s brave enough for this.

Three minutes later, Kate obediently goes to get her hair and makeup done. Hours later she walks down the aisle and says her vows. She becomes Kate Barkley, Richard Barkley’s wife, and her life begins anew.

They move into Flitcroft and settle in. Richard works on the base and Kate looks into applying to teach at one of the schools in the garrison. Six weeks after the last moving van drives off from their house Kate finds out that she’s pregnant.

She throws up right after the pregnancy test and not because of morning sickness either. Richard strokes her back while she clings to him crying and not being able to articulate why for a good ten minutes. She can feel the terror surging over her in waves every time she thinks about the tiny human life incubating inside her. She’s never been so fucking scared.

“I don’t want to be a shit mother,” she sobs to Richard once she can actually speak coherently again. She doesn’t want to be like her parents, she doesn’t want her baby to grow up feeling lost and unwanted and unloved. She doesn’t want her baby to grow up like _her_ \- paralysed by her fear and losing everything she wants because she’s too much of a coward to take the road less travelled. She doesn’t know if she can do this.

“You’re not going to be a shit mother,” Richard says calmly. “And you know I’m going to do everything I can to make sure I’m not going to be a shit dad either. We’re going to love this child and take care of them and love them and do right by them and we’ll do it together. And the rest… it’ll be rust and stardust.”

Kate chokes a laugh and kicks him lightly in the shin. “Don’t quote fucking _Lolita_ to a pregnant woman, you disgusting man.”

He grins at her and kisses her forehead. “It’ll be fine, Katie. Everything is going to be okay.”

Richard is true to his word (mostly). Everything does turn out to be okay (again, mostly).

Her pregnancy isn’t a bed of roses but it’s not unbearable. Richard accompanies her to every ultrasound and buries himself in books on childbirth and child-rearing with the same intensity he applied to his assignments back in uni. He even veers down a rabbit hole of childbearing rituals around the world and the political factors at play in quashing some and keeping others alive. “You can take the student out of International Relations, but you can’t take the International Relations out of the student,” Kate remarks drily when he spends all of one dinner basically reciting an essay to her. It’s charming and amusing and it warms her heart. No one can say Richard isn’t dedicated.

They decide to keep the sex a surprise, but they talk about it in bed at night. Richard says, “I want twins,” and Kate rolls her eyes and replies, “I think pushing one human being out of my body is going to be traumatic enough, thank you,” and pokes Richard in the side when he laughs. They talk about names, too - Kate vetoes Richard Jr. and brooks no argument. “If it’s a boy he’s getting his own name. None of that nonsense. You’re not that great, Richard.”

“You wound me, Katie,” he teases. “I’d like something strong-sounding. And meaningful. I think my mum would love a biblical name - something classic, you know. Samuel, or Isaiah, or James, or Daniel, or…”

“I like James, I like how it sounds.”

“James Barkley,” Richard says aloud, trying it out. “I do like that. For the ‘under consideration’ list, then. And if it’s a girl…”

 _Lisa,_ Kate thinks, briefly, and it hits her like a punch right to the sternum, like it always does. Kate imagines showing her daughter pictures of the two of them, back when, and kissing her temple and telling her _you were named for the best person I know. My best friend. The most important person in my life._

She wouldn’t. The same reason why she wouldn’t give a son Richard’s name. Their child deserves to grow up as their own person, without carrying the weight of someone else’s legacy on their shoulders. But Kate wonders, if it might mean something. If giving her child Lisa’s name would help her to forget - slowly, but surely, her name taking on a different meaning, until one day she’d think _Lisa_ and her Lisa wouldn’t appear in her mind at all.

“I hope it’s a boy,” she says quietly. “Our boy. James.”

“Our boy,” Richard repeats. He rests his hand against the swell of Kate’s stomach and Kate closes her eyes and reminds herself that no matter what, she will love this child more than anything else in the world. More than Richard or Lisa or herself. No matter what, she will never become her parents.

James Matthew Barkley is born on a squalling November night; Kate is twenty-four and it’s without question the hardest, most painful, most exhausting, and most rewarding thing she’s ever done. Richard faints in the delivery room and Kate nearly throws up laughing at him. Richard’s mother has a good laugh when his parents come to visit and Kate tells them all about it. “I see it’s genetic. Graham, tell Kate what happened when the doctors said they needed to do a caesarean section when Richard was born - “

“Anne, darling, they were talking about _cutting our son out of you,_ so I really do think I can’t be blamed for being just a little bit overwhelmed.”

Richard’s mother rolls her eyes theatrically and leans towards Kate. _“Men,”_ she stage-whispers, making Kate laugh. She’s so fiercely glad that these are the grandparents James will grow up with. He doesn’t need anything else. Kate looks down at her little boy and runs gentle fingers over his cheek. He’s absolutely perfect. Kate thinks if Lisa were here right now, absolutely _everything_ would be perfect.

She writes another letter to her, includes two photos - one of her and James, one of James alone. When she sends it off she’s _sure_ this time Lisa will reply - she sent flowers to her wedding, after all, and this is her _baby._ Her son.

A week passes, then two. A month. More. Kate’s hope ebbs and ebbs, and finally, four months after James is born, she lets it go. Her son is growing like a weed, amazing her and challenging her every single day. He’s everything. He fills all the empty spaces inside her that were cored out by her parents, by Lisa. She will miss Lisa for the rest of her life, she knows that. But she survived nineteen years before Lisa and she can survive decades more beyond her. There are decisions in her life she’s made that she regrets but every moment she’s lived has brought her here to her son. She wouldn’t give that up for anything.

When James - Richard has defaulted to calling him ‘Jamie’ the way he calls her ‘Katie’ and Kate is resigned to a losing battle in that regard - is seven months old, Richard gets deployed for the first time. It’s nerve-wracking for Richard and terrifying for Kate and for the first time the reality of his enlistment really hits her full in the face. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if he doesn’t come back to them. Richard promises to come home but she knows it’s not a promise he can be sure to keep.

She worries for the whole six months he’s gone. Taking care of Jamie is a full-time job and keeps her busy but the nagging fear is a constant spectre at the back of her mind regardless. She calls Richard’s parents sometimes, and they drop by the garrison for a few days to visit, but London’s so far away she’s basically on her own most of the time.

She tries to make friends within the garrison, with the other wives who are in the same boat as her, but it doesn’t really work. They seem to operate on a different wavelength, one that Kate, for the life of her, just can’t seem to tune into. She’s too uptight, too high-strung, too everything. She eventually retreats back into her little bubble, just her and Jamie, when it dawns on her that she’s spent months just looking for another Lisa and that there’s absolutely no way she’s going to find her.

Nobody’s like Lisa and nobody ever will be. She knew that, and she also knows nobody is ever going to compare. She stops trying, and just focuses on Jamie. He’s her enough; he’s supposed to be. Just like Richard was. All she needs to survive.

Richard comes back from his first tour safe and sound. He survives that tour; his mother doesn’t survive the year. A heart attack, at work, one that seems to come out of nowhere. Stress, perhaps, her doctor surmises. One day she’s fine, having called Kate and told her she was looking forward to visiting Jamie at Christmas; the next day, they’re planning her funeral.

Kate cries so hard when they bury her that her legs nearly give out. She has to lean on Richard; so does his father, who doesn’t speak a word throughout the entire service. He looks like someone’s taken his heart out of his body, like a part of him died when his wife did. Kate thinks she remembers, a little, of how that feels. The gaping wound. The jagged scar along her side where something was torn from her and she was left to bleed.

They get two years to recover from Anne’s death but all the old cracks along her heart reopen when Richard gets deployed once more. Jamie is three, an active, playful little toddler that keeps Kate on her toes with his propensity for running around and touching absolutely everything he can get his hands on. He calls Richard ‘Papa’ and demands Richard play kickball with him every Saturday and reliably identifies Anne when he’s shown pictures of her, and Kate will never forgive Richard if her son loses his grandmother and his father before he even goes to kindergarten. Richard’s father has aged a decade since his wife died; he’s ill and tired and barely shows interest in anything except when Kate brings Jamie down to London to visit. She feels like it’s only a matter of time now with Graham and Richard knows it too and Kate will not survive being left alone. She won’t.

“Come home,” she tells him, _orders_ him, and on his first tour Richard had kissed her cheek and said “I promise,” but this time he just gives her a brief smile and rests his forehead against hers and says, “I’ll do everything I can, Katie.”

He knows better now. She thinks they both do.

He comes home but it’s emptier and hollower and his eyes don’t light up as much when he picks Jamie up and throws him into the air and swings him around. His kiss feels more distant and Kate wants to scream, wants to grip his shirt and twist the fabric in her fingers and tell him to _be here,_ because he’s alive, he’s right here with her, that’s where he has to be, even though she knows it’s not a fair thing to ask because her heart has never really lain with him, not completely.

She lost Lisa to Lisa’s passion, to the path she chose to walk. It’s five-going-on-six years since she’s seen Lisa in the flesh. Richard’s beside her every day he’s not on tour and Kate doesn’t know what she’ll do if she loses him even while he sleeps in the same bed. It scares her. Everything scares her these days; always has, maybe. Some days it feels like she’s never going to be ruled by anything but her fear and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

Kate starts working again, part-time, when Jamie is five and starts going to school. Regular school hours don’t work so well for her because Jamie ends earlier than she would and she doesn’t want to leave him in after-school care. She takes up tutoring instead, helping some of the kids in the garrison with their schoolwork. It’s flexible work, pays fairly well. It’s not exactly what she expected she’d be doing while working on her dissertation in uni but really, who is _precisely_ where they wanted to be when they were in their early twenties?

She’s out tutoring the morning it happens. She finishes up her two-hour session, then goes to pick Jamie up and head home to put him down for his afternoon nap and figure out what to make for Richard to come home to at dinnertime. But when she opens the front door he’s sitting on the couch in the living room with his face in his hands and Kate just knows.

“Papa, you’re home early!” Jamie shouts, running over and leaping into Richard’s lap. Richard tousles his hair and holds him close but his smile is brief and wan. Kate sits heavily down beside him. “What happened?”

Richard rests his chin atop Jamie’s head and doesn’t speak for a very long time. Jamie just looks curious, innocently confused. “Papa? Are you okay?”

“I’m - no, son,” he whispers softly. His eyes are clouded with grief. “Jamie, listen - I just got some bad news about Grandpa Graham.”

“What news?” Jamie asks, wide-eyed, guileless, and Kate sits frozen and watches Richard haltingly explain death and finality to their son for the first time. She sees Jamie slowly begin to understand, the way his lower lip wobbles when Richard tells him they won’t get to see his grandfather any more. He cries into Richard’s shirt and Kate hugs them both and holds them until they’re all cried out.

Richard gets compassionate leave and Kate reschedules all her tutoring sessions for the week, and they drive down to London to handle funeral arrangements. Graham is buried beside his wife and she doesn’t cry as hard this time but only because all she can think of is how it feels like she’s fated to lose everything good in her life.

Richard goes to sleep ridiculously early after the service, exhausted, and Jamie follows suit. Kate leaves them in the hotel and takes the Tube down to London Met and walks around the campus. It’s cold enough that her breath fogs in the air but she keeps her steps slow and measured anyway. Retraces paths she hasn’t taken in years. If she closes her eyes she can see the afterimages of her and Lisa, so much younger, so much greener, racing through the halls, sneaking onto rooftops, fucking each other senseless in dorm rooms. Every time something wonderful or something terrible happens, she’s still the first person Kate thinks of. The first person she wants to tell.

“I miss you,” she says to nothing but empty air. “I’m scared. I miss how you never were and how it made me feel like I could be brave too.” She shivers, tucking her hands into her coat pockets. “I _miss_ you,” she repeats, louder this time. “I still think of you every day and wonder why we fell apart.” _I love you,_ she doesn’t say. _I wish you were here to see my son. Some days I still wish he was yours, too._

She walks until the windchill starts to bite hard and then she takes the Tube back to Richard and Jamie, still fast asleep. She slips into bed beside them and eases her breathing until she finally drifts off too.

She doesn’t lose any more people for the next three years because she keeps Richard close and Jamie closer and there is no one else to lose. She doesn’t conceive of gaining anything because that ended for her after Jamie.

She doesn’t think she really _gains_ something when Jamie turns eight, when she’s thirty-two, ten full years after she graduates from university. It doesn’t really feel like gaining something. From the start, it just feels like getting something back.

She’s wrapping up her tutoring session with Benjamin, one of Jamie’s friends, assigning him things to read before she sees him again next week. She heads down to the front hallway to say goodbye to his mother and finds her chatting to someone on the front porch. She catches sight of Kate and waves her over. “And this is Kate Barkley, Major Barkley’s wife. Kate, this is Lisa Lawson - she’s just moved onto the base, she lives next door.”

Kate gets a few precious seconds to feel the pang in her chest that always comes whenever she hears that name - but it’s just a name, nothing more, because she fell in love with Lisa Vaugh and it’s Lisa Vaugh she’s been thinking of for years, until she steps forward and the woman Benjamin’s mother is speaking to comes into view, and everything just stops.

They’re both so much older. There are new lines on Lisa’s face and she’s filled out a little and her hair is dyed darker but the minute Kate sees her, there is absolutely no doubt. It’s Lisa.

She’s pretty sure she sees Lisa go still when they lock eyes. For a moment there is no mask; everything falls away and her eyes light up with shock and disbelief and her mouth drops open and she looks younger, she looks exactly like the Lisa Kate remembers her to be. “Kate,” she says, softly, a little awed, like she didn’t believe the world could possibly bring them together again. Kate’s heart is thudding in her chest, so fast it’s hard to breathe. Years - she’s been missing Lisa for _years,_ had resigned herself to Lisa being her first thought every morning when she woke up but no more than that. She wants nothing more than to run to Lisa, sweep her into her arms and see if Lisa would still kiss the same way they did in university, if her body still remembers the curves of Kate’s own.

But it’s been ten years and they’re in a house that doesn’t belong to either of them, miles away from the London Met; she has Richard and Jamie waiting for her back home and Lisa is Lisa _Lawson_ now and that’s all enough to stop Kate in her tracks. Benjamin’s mother smiles at both of them. “Ah, so you two know each other?”

 _Yes,_ Kate wants to say, _I know her. I know her like I know my own heart._ A shadow passes over Lisa’s face and suddenly the light in her eyes dims, her smile slipping. “We met in university,” she replies shortly. Her gaze doesn’t shift away. “What a small world. It’s nice to see you again, Kate.”

Her voice is smooth and polite, a hint of tension there, keeping her reserved. Nothing like what Kate remembers. It never felt like Lisa was hiding anything with her, not ever, but things are different now. She just manages to choke out a _nice to see you too_ past the ache clawing in her throat. Her mind is whirling and she suddenly feels like she has to move, she has to _leave_ or she’s going to do something impulsive and idiotic that she won’t be able to come back from. She walks rapidly out of the door with a quick goodbye, but Lisa grabs her wrist before she can run to her car. “Hey! Wait. Where are you staying on the base? We should catch up. Let me know your address?”

“Oh, right, yes.” Kate mechanically rattles off her street number and name to Lisa, trying not to stare too long at her. “Right. I have to go pick Jamie up, I’ll, I - just drop by whenever - we’ll catch up.” Her tone upturning at the end, more of a question than anything, because she realises, suddenly, how desperately she wants Lisa to _want_ to catch up, to see her again. Lisa’s right here in the same garrison, right now, not in Ireland or where the fuck ever that Kate imagined she was, and she’s scared that they won’t have miles of distance between them and Lisa still won’t want to see her anyway.

 _I want to see you,_ she thinks. _I want to go back to the way we were -_

“Tomorrow afternoon? I’ll come by after lunch, if that works,” says Lisa, still impossibly measured and casual and Kate’s heart hurts and hurts and hurts. “Yeah. See you then.”

She holds herself together long enough to get in her car and drive towards Jamie’s school, pick him up with a hug and make sure he’s safely buckled up in the back before heading home. He bounds off to take a shower and Kate digs her nails into her arms and forces herself not to cry.

Lisa keeps her word and appears at the front door the next afternoon in a plain button-up and bootcut jeans. She looks - different. Not just the face or hair or clothes, but something in the way she carries herself. When Lisa speaks there’s still charm, still confidence, but Kate remembers Lisa in university on stage in front of the mic, back straight and singing her heart out. Looking fearless. Like she had the world at her feet and wanted nothing more than Kate sharing it with her. There’s a slope in her shoulders that says she doesn’t feel that way any more.

They sit in the living room with mugs of hot tea and Lisa tells Kate about an exhilarating six months touring in Ireland, opening for the headlining band night after night. They’d felt so alive, being met with the roars of appreciative audiences at concert halls all over the region. They’d thought it could be like that forever. Then the tour had ended and they’d thrown themselves into building a brand, creating something bigger than themselves - working their asses off to become the band they wanted to be. Three _insane,_ exhausting, ultimately unsuccessful years struggling to book gigs or write original songs that could meld together in the perfect album. Thomas getting restless, Asher becoming disillusioned. Lisa tells Kate she never lost hope - she just found something else.

His name is Red, Kate learns. She met him when the band was performing at a small-scale music festival - he’d been in between terms at Sandhurst and was running festival security as a favour to one of his friends who was managing the entire event. Instant chemistry, Lisa tells her. A series of hookups that led to her getting pregnant, then falling in love with her baby from the very first ultrasound. Her daughter, Frankie, is six this year and Lisa would bring down the moon for her if that was what she wanted.

“Two years younger than Jamie,” Kate murmurs, practically to herself; Lisa grins at her. “Yeah. You _never_ told me you had a child too.”

“I wrote you. You never replied,” she retorts. It comes out harsher than she intends and she sees Lisa’s mouth go tight at the edges for a second before her expression smooths out again. “That was… eight years ago, right? Yeah, I might have missed the letter. I’m sorry, Kate. The band was facing a lot of roadblocks at that time. Smoothing things over and fighting fires… that was my whole life. Well, for a while.”

“I thought you were going to…” Kate falters; she doesn’t know how to say what she wants to say without sounding like a condescending, judgmental arsehole. So much has changed, and Kate, more than anyone, understands how motherhood can drastically overhaul one’s priorities. But still, the memories of Lisa’s fierce love and undying passion for music live on in her mind and have for years. She was so sure that Lisa was somewhere recording EPs, not marrying a soldier and settling down to raise a child, just like her.

Lisa cocks an eyebrow, then shrugs. “Frankie’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” she states, like she expects it to explain everything, and because Kate is a mother who adores her son, it does. She resists the urge to ask Lisa if that turn of phrase ever applied to her. God knows she thought that so many times when it came to Lisa until Jamie was born.

“I can’t believe we’ve bumped into each other here of all places. After ten bloody years,” Lisa says jauntily. Her expression softens as Kate looks at her and Lisa looks back without flinching. “I meant it when I said I missed you, Kate. It’s been so long. I hope we can see each other around more often… and be friends again, if you want.”

 _Again?_ Did they stop being friends without Kate realising it, just because there were miles between them, cloaked with silence and goodbyes they never said? _We’ll still be friends even if it’s Richard you’re sleeping with and not me, right?_ Her throat feels scratchy and tight with words she wants to say, but can’t.

“I’d like that,” Kate eventually replies, because she’s been married nine years with a young son, and Lisa has a husband who Kate assumes she loves and a daughter, and this isn’t university any more and she can’t tell Lisa she’s been missing an unnameable something for a decade and that she thinks she’ll be able to fill the gap if Lisa just pushes her back against the couch and fucks her and starts something all over again. She never thought she’d be lucky enough to cross paths with Lisa again after their ten-year separation. Regaining their friendship should be enough.

So many things in Kate’s life have had to just be enough. She’s used to this. She can survive it again.

Time passes. Lisa settles into Flitcroft and they start seeing each other semi-regularly. She comes over for dinner with Richard - they make it a surprise, Richard not yet having heard she’s Staff Sergeant Lawson’s wife. He comes into the dining room after work and, like Kate, recognises Lisa the second he lays eyes on her. His shocked, delighted yell makes Lisa laugh and get up to throw her arms around him, and it sounds genuine and sweet in a way her voice doesn’t when she’s talking to Kate.

It becomes a pattern. Lisa gets to know the other wives on the base and is unfailingly charming and friendly the way she was in her early twenties, getting along with everyone who crosses her path. When she brings Frankie over for playdates with Jamie she joins in their games and ruffles Jamie’s hair and he beams up wide at her like they’re mates. But with Kate, there’s a brittleness to it, a brightness that feels forced where it used to be the most natural thing in the world. Like there’s an unspoken something lingering between them, poisoning their reunion. _Talk to me if you’re angry!_ Kate wants to scream when it gets too heavy, when their idle chatter fades to silence while they sit on the couch watching their children play in Lisa’s living room. _I want things to go back to the way they were. Just talk to me,_ she thinks, but never says, because after all this time she’s still terrified of what would happen if Lisa looked back at her and said _okay. Let’s talk,_ and said all the things Kate can’t bear to hear.

Even Richard notices. “What’s with you and Lisa? You always seem so strained when she comes around. I thought you’d be delighted to have her in Flitcroft. You’ve been missing her so much these past ten years.”

“I am,” Kate replies automatically - true on both counts, though Richard doesn’t hear it; of course she’s happy to have Lisa here. It’s just that somehow she’s still missing her even though she’s twenty minutes’ walk away.

“It’s amazing to see her again,” Richard continues as they wash dishes side by side. “We were talking at the welfare centre the other day and she was saying she might want to work with Cleo to set up jam sessions or something. For recreation and all that. I thought it would be fun to join in. It’s been a while since I touched my guitar. It’d be just like old times.”

 _What the hell do you know about the ‘old times’, Richard,_ Kate almost snaps. She washes a bowl with more force as she pushes away thoughts of Lisa in her bed and Lisa’s mouth on hers and Lisa doing the same with God knows how many other people around the campus.

She doesn’t say anything more, but she does start looking.

Lisa flits around the garrison with an ease Kate’s never been able to emulate, befriending all the wives and getting along with a lot of the soldiers too. Red gets deployed a month after they move to Flitcroft and Lisa keeps herself plenty distracted with jam sessions and coffee mornings and movie nights.

Kate’s not an idiot. She knows shit sometimes goes on behind the soldiers’ backs especially when they’re on tour and she’s never said anything because it’s not her business, but everything seems to catch her attention nowadays. Lisa’s cheerful conversations with some of the sergeants stationed on the base. The way she carelessly, thoughtlessly lays a hand on another wife’s arm or wrist and leans into her listening like she never wants to listen to anything else.

 _You used to look at me like that,_ Kate thinks. _Like you wanted me,_ and now Lisa leaves a carefully calculated six inches of space between them when they sit on her couch. Kate comes home one evening after chaperoning Jamie’s class for a field trip and finds out Lisa came over for lunch with Richard - _just to catch up,_ he tells her, occupied with playing a board game with Jamie and not looking at her. Kate goes to make herself tea and sets the kettle to boil with shaking hands. The question lingers between her clenched teeth. _Did you fuck her? Did you fuck her? Did you fuck her?_ She’s pretty sure Lisa never fucked Richard in university but so much has changed now and she’s not certain if this has changed with it. She imagines Lisa going on her knees for him, riding him on the couch, images that she can still call up in her mind with pristine clarity, and rage just boils inside her.

She knows her anger shouldn’t be predicated primarily on bitterness - she knows if Richard’s really cheating on her she should be furious because _her husband is sleeping with someone else._ But all Kate can think about is the last time she had sex with Lisa, when she’d still thought their friendship was something that could survive anything thrown at it, and she wants to go over to Lisa’s house right now, grab her by the collar and shake her. _Why him?_

_Why not me?_

She doesn’t confront either of them because there really isn’t any evidence and for all she knows she’s just misinterpreting things and coming to baseless conclusions but it doesn’t do anything for the anger sitting inside her like a stone. She continues spending time with Lisa - Jamie and Frankie get along like a house on fire and Jamie has, on one occasion, declared her his best friend - but that tension between them continues to build and twist. Sometimes Kate looks up from playing with the children to find Lisa looking at her with something odd and unscrutable in her expression, but she always breaks her gaze the moment their eyes meet and Kate never finds the courage to confront her about it.

The closest she thinks they come to mending whatever gap has opened up between them is a week after Red returns from his tour, when he’s sleeping on the couch with Frankie on his chest and she and Lisa are on the front porch looking up at the sky and talking and drinking a bottle of wine; they’re both tipsy and the space Lisa has been leaving between them when they sit together shrinks and shrinks. Shoulders almost brushing when she bumps an elbow against Kate’s. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you this, but I’m really happy for you. I mean that. Richard obviously makes you so happy, and you’re so good with Jamie. I always thought of you even when struggling with the band was eating me alive, Kate. I always hoped you were doing okay and I’m glad you were.”

Kate feels comfortably fuzzy and warm from the wine and it makes her tongue loose enough to say things she means. “I missed you. I still do.”

Lisa gives her a quizzical look, smiling. “What? I’m right here.”

Kate laughs softly. “Are you?”

“I don’t understand,” says Lisa, and Kate doesn’t want to say _you’re not here in the ways that matter_ because the night is lovely and she feels closer to Lisa than she has in years and she wants to keep that, doesn’t want to sully it. She just reaches for the bottle and pours them both some more wine. After a second of hesitation, Lisa lets her, and they keep drinking.

“I’m happy for you too,” Kate finally replies, after the bottle is finished. She doesn’t look Lisa in the eyes because she doesn’t want Lisa to see all the ways she doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t want Lisa to see that Kate hasn’t been happy in years, not really. She feels stupid, and angry with herself.

Lisa’s moved on. Lisa’s happy for her, without her, doing exactly what and who she wants, and Kate has been bleeding from the wound she left all this time, and never really stopped.

The tipping point arrives unexpectedly on a Thursday afternoon when Jamie and Frankie are at school and Richard and Red are working and she’s on Lisa’s couch and Lisa is talking about the last jam session she hosted with the wives and some of the soldiers, Richard inclusive. Her voice is fond and excited and something just snaps inside Kate when she imagines this Lisa - older now and different from what Kate knew but still the only person Kate’s ever wanted to spend her entire life with - sleeping with whoever the fuck she wants, sucking Richard’s dick behind Kate’s back and not caring about it because it’s _casual_ and _having fun_ and _letting off steam_ and she’s fucking tired of having Lisa right here and yet so far away and wanting and wanting and _wanting -_

She leans in and kisses Lisa halfway through a sentence and stops her in her tracks. Her mouth is soft, warm, _exactly_ how Kate remembers her; she moans and deepens the kiss, pushing closer into Lisa’s space - it’s been so long, it already feels so good, she’s wet just from this and she wants Lisa to push her into the couch and get her hand down her jeans and fuck her, make her come the way only Lisa has ever been able to. She wants to forget everything else, like she did in uni - just lose herself to Lisa’s hands, her mouth, the sound of her voice telling Kate to come for her -

“What the fuck are you doing?” Lisa says instead, one hand against Kate’s collarbone, shoving her away. Kate reels back a little, looking at Lisa’s shock and utter confusion written on her face. “Kate, _what are you doing?”_

She looks bewildered, and more than that, genuinely _angry,_ and something sharp and hot rises in her throat, all the pain and bottled rage she’s been keeping buried deep within coming to the surface. “What? I just want us to go back to the _way we were._ Like in university. You’re already doing that, what’s one more person?”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Come on, Lisa, I’m not an idiot,” Kate snaps back. “You were sleeping around in uni, and that was fine, I didn’t care, it was just fun, and I don’t care that you’re doing the same now in the garrison. I don’t care if you need to let off steam or the soldiers do or the wives, I _don’t._ Fuck, you can sleep with Richard for all I care, but let’s not pretend that if my _husband_ is good enough for you to fuck then you’ve got some qualm about going back to our arrangement from back when and fucking me too - “

“What in the goddamn _fuck_ are you talking about,” Lisa interrupts, this time so quiet and cold and venomous that Kate stops immediately. A sudden current of fear runs down her spine; she’s never, ever seen Lisa this still, this furious, a string pulled taut and ready to snap. Kate’s been intimidated by Lisa before, awestruck, but she’s never been _afraid,_ not until now. Lisa bites every word out, slow and careful, sounding like she’ll completely lose it on Kate and kill her if she doesn’t. “I’m not _sleeping_ with Richard, Kate. I’m not sleeping with anyone in this fucking garrison. Where the fuck did you get that idea?” She doesn’t wait for Kate to respond, barrelling on in the same faux-calm tone that makes Kate shiver. “I know you might not be able to believe this, but you can make friends and talk to people and enjoy their company without sex being involved. And just because _you_ want to cheat on your husband and fuck other women doesn’t mean everyone else does.”

Kate flinches. “I don’t want to _fuck other women - “_

“Then why the fuck did you _kiss me?_ Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“I don’t want to fuck other women, Lisa, I want _you - “_

Lisa slams her hand down on the coffee table so hard Kate jumps; how the glass doesn’t shatter under her palm she doesn’t know. “No. Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare give me that bullshit about _wanting_ me, Kate, it’s been ten _fucking_ years since you chose Richard over me and ten years you’ve stuck to that decision and married him and had a fucking baby with him - “

“What?” It’s Kate’s turn to be completely blindsided. “What do you mean _chose Richard over you?”_

Lisa stares at her like she’s a fucking moron. “I’m sorry? Did you or did you not spend two years with me only to dump me the second an eligible bachelor decided he was your Prince Charming?”

 _“Dump you?”_ Kate’s head spins - what the fuck is Lisa talking about? “We weren’t together, Lisa, it was casual. It was just _fun,_ we were just hooking up to let off steam, that’s what _you_ said the last time we properly talked!”

“Yeah, because you’d just told me you were _seeing Richard!_ What the fuck was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to - “ She stops, exhaling hard, running a hand over her face. “I was twenty-one years old, Kate. Two _fucking_ years, I - I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else, you fucking idiot, at least not after the first month I met you. It wasn’t just casual for me. It was _never_ just casual for me.”

Kate’s heart is pounding in her ears, and it feels like the entire world has spun off its axis, like everything she knew to be true has been turned over on its end. “You _never_ said.”

Lisa laughs, mirthless. “Yeah. I was young and I was stupid. I thought you knew, and I was wrong.” A pause, a breath, and when she speaks again it’s acutely bitter. “I thought I knew you. I was wrong.”

It wasn’t casual. All that time, years ago, it wasn’t casual. Lisa wasn’t just hooking up with her. Lisa was in love with her, the way Kate was, the way Kate still is, has never stopped. They could have been so much more - but it’s ten years later and she’s sitting in Lisa’s living room while their husbands are at work and Lisa is looking at Kate like she’s a stranger. “Did you seriously come here just for a quick fuck?” She asks, the anger bleeding from her words, leaving just quiet, aghast disbelief, and a deep, deep hurt. “All this time we were catching up, and I thought we were trying to rebuild our friendship - how long have you spent believing I was slutting around the garrison opening my legs for whoever asked, including you? And thinking less of me for it?”

“Lisa - “

“Shut the fuck up,” Lisa says without pause. “Holy shit, Kate. Did you really think I was fucking _Richard_ behind your back? Your fucking husband? _Your_ husband, Kate! My best friend’s husband!” Her voice cracks on the last sentence. “You really, really don’t know me. You never - you have never known me, and you really have never cared about me, or thought of me as your equal, or _loved_ me, ever. Not ten years ago, and not now.”

Kate knows she’s crying but she can’t stop. Lisa is still as stone, not giving anything away. “Get out, Kate.”

“Lisa,” Kate gasps past her desperate sobs. “Please, don’t, I’m - Lisa, I’m sorry, I’m sorry - “

“Get out,” she repeats softly. She doesn’t scream it, which only makes things worse. “Kate, get the fuck out of my house or I won’t be responsible for my actions. And don’t come back. I don’t want to see you ever again.”

_Don’t be so morbid. Jesus, goodbye… nobody’s dying. And we’ll still be friends even if it’s Richard you’re sleeping with and not me, right?_

_See you soon. Good luck with your dissertation, Kate. You’re going to fucking crush it._

_See you soon_ turned into ten years and _we’ll still be friends_ turned to this and Kate stumbles out of Lisa’s house and cries all the way home.

Years. She’s been in love with Lisa for years, and Kate thinks a tiny part of her has always hoped some miracle would somehow bestow itself upon her and she’d get her elusive happy ending with the girl she’s always, always wanted by her side but she’s thirty-two years old shutting her front door behind her and sinking down with her back against the door sobbing into her hands, her world shattered at her feet, and it’s over.

It’s over.

She doesn’t go over to Lisa’s. They don’t talk. She avoids all the places she knows Lisa frequents. Richard can tell something’s happened but he doesn’t ask. Kate thinks he realises it’s huge, something he can’t touch for fear of things falling apart for him too. They keep on going, pretending like everything’s normal. Pretending nothing has happened.

Jamie doesn’t pretend, still too young and innocent for that. He snuggles up to Kate one night when she’s tucking him in and reading him his bedtime story and looks sad and pensive. “Mummy? Why don’t we go over to Auntie Lisa’s house any more?”

Kate fights to keep her expression neutral, flipping a page of his chosen book. “Auntie Lisa’s a little upset at Mummy about something, sweetheart. She’d like to be left alone, and Mummy’s respecting her space.”

“Was it my fault? Did I do something bad? Is that why I can’t play with Frankie any more?”

Kate feels her heart breaking. She sets the book aside and pulls Jamie close, feeling his little arms around her neck. “You didn’t do anything wrong, baby,” she says - _I did. Just me._ He sniffles into her shoulder, sounding younger than his eight years. “I miss Frankie. She’s my best friend.”

“I know,” Kate whispers. The tears are dripping down her cheeks but she tries to keep her voice level, tries to make sure Jamie doesn’t see. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I’m so sorry.”

Jamie hugs her tighter. “Can you be friends with Auntie Lisa again, Mummy? Will she let me see Frankie again if you do?”

Kate draws a shuddery breath. She holds him and doesn’t let go. “I don’t know how,” she replies, quietly. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I don’t know how.”

It’s true - painfully, achingly - she doesn’t know how, and she doesn’t realise why until a month later when she’s getting groceries and overhears two of the wives gossiping about a divorce - about Staff Sergeant Lawson’s impending divorce.

Kate goes home, drops the groceries on the kitchen table, and walks right over to Cleo’s house; if anybody’s going to know what’s going on with any of the women it’s going to be the RSM’s wife.

“I really don’t know the whole story, Kate,” says Cleo as she bustles around the kitchen getting dinner ready. “I think she’s sick of being tied to the military, and she wants Frankie to have a ‘normal life’, whatever _that_ means. And I suppose cracks were appearing in the relationship? She did say they practically did it shotgun, what with the pregnancy. A lot of those don’t end well; look at _my_ first marriage.”

“So she’s leaving,” says Kate - she feels distant, like she’s hovering outside her body watching it speak without her express permission. Cleo nods. “Next week, I think.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“No,” Cleo replies, pausing to give Kate a narrower look. “Why all the questions, Kate? I thought you two were close - didn’t she tell you herself?”

“I have to go,” Kate says, in lieu of a reply. “Thank you, Cleo. Have a nice evening.”

If Cleo says something Kate doesn’t hear it; she pulls her coat on and leaves and just - walks. She walks until it gets darker, and colder, and the streetlights come on to light her way. She walks and goes over every memory she has with Lisa, of Lisa, since that very first night at the bar. Lisa asking Kate to come home with her, Lisa asking -

And that’s the thing, Kate realises. Ten-plus years and she’s spent all that time letting Lisa make the first move, always. Wanting her that night at the bar but waiting until Lisa asked the question. Standing in the church on her wedding day hoping against hope for Lisa to save her from it, to sweep her away in her arms. Years spent waiting for Lisa to appear back in her life, wanting Lisa to save her, to chase her, to take her away. She’s older now and she understands why. She was scared. She has _always_ been so fucking scared of fucking everything. Always taken the safe route, always clutched at stability come the end of the day over everything else she wanted in her life. Kate swore she’d never be like her parents and how is she thirty-two, how is it that she hasn’t seen them in a decade but they still weigh on her shoulders when she should’ve shaken them off the moment they told her to leave their home and never darken their doorstep ever again? Her father’s voice screaming _useless_ and her mother’s screaming _stupid_ and she’s spent so much time trying to prove herself useful and smart and brilliant and perfect and good that she forgot to just be herself.

 _I don’t know how,_ and it’s taken a month - no, it’s taken a whole lifetime - but Kate finally, finally does.

She makes sure Jamie’s occupied doing his homework in his room before sitting Richard down in the living room that night. She’s pretty certain he knows the moment she tells him _we need to talk._ Richard’s no idiot even though he married one. “I want to get a divorce.”

Richard’s jaw pulls tight; he looks strained, on the edge of anger, but not surprised. “I assume you’re going to tell me exactly why.”

“Lisa’s leaving,” Kate says quietly. “I have to go with her.”

“Why?” He asks, even though he knows, of course he knows, he _has_ to. Kate gives him a despairing look. “I think you know why.”

He sits in silence, taking slow, steady breaths. Kate knows he’d never hit her but she’s pretty sure the basest human instinct in him wants to, and she doesn’t blame him one iota. He laughs softly after a minute, a low, grim sound, gets up and rounds the living room once before sitting heavily back down, leaning his forehead against one hand. “Jesus Christ, Katie. How long? How long have you been in love with her?”

“Thirteen years,” says Kate. She won’t lie to him and she won’t lie to herself any more. Richard barks another harsh laugh. “Thirteen fucking years. I - before me. Since you were nineteen years old.”

 _Since the moment I met her,_ Kate thinks. _For the only part of my life that matters._

“All this time,” Richard continues, obviously struggling to keep his voice steady. “You’ve been in love with her _all this time?_ Even when you said yes to being my girlfriend, and to being my _wife?_ I - my _God,_ Kate, have you ever loved me at _all?”_

“Of course I do,” Kate whispers brokenly. She did and she does; Richard gave her so much - he gave her _Jamie_ \- and he’s one of the most important people in her life and he always will be, he’s just not her and he never could be. No one could. “Just - not the way I love her. I’ve never loved anybody like I love her.” She swallows hard and it feels like her throat scrapes on broken glass. “Richard, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know I fucked up. I never meant to hurt you. I’m sorry - I know that’s not enough, but I can’t - I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Richard lifts his head and looks at her, a wry smile twisted on his lips. “I wish you’d been sorrier ten years ago,” he says, the words layered with hurt and anger and more than a little scorn. “You could have saved us all so much pain. Her, and me, and you.” He reaches for the post-its on the side table, scrawling down _CALL LAWYER_ in black marker and getting up to stick it on the fridge. “We’ll figure out divorce proceedings tomorrow. I’m going to bed. I’d appreciate if you took the guest room for the night.”

“Richard,” Kate says, forcing the words past her lips even though it feels like the weight of the world is sitting on her chest, making it hard to breathe. She doesn’t know how to shape them. “I - Jamie - “

Richard snorts, one simple sound that makes Kate want to cry. She loves him so much and it hurts so badly to have him be so angry with her even though she knows he has every right to be and it’s her own fault. “I’m not going to take Jamie from you, Kate. I’m not that cruel. He needs his mother. We’ll figure things out. Go to sleep. I don’t feel like talking any more tonight.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate says, one last time as he heads upstairs, even though it’s woefully inadequate. Richard doesn’t reply and Kate doesn’t expect him to.

She goes to Lisa’s house the next morning after Richard’s left for work, after she’s dropped Jamie off. She stands on Lisa’s doorstep waiting for her car to pull back up in the driveway when she gets back from sending Frankie to school too. Her heart races a thousand miles a minute when the car idles to a stop and Lisa gets out, standing in the driveway with her arms folded. “I told you I didn’t ever want to see you again.”

“Please,” says Kate. “I just want to apologise. And to talk to you - “

“We don’t have anything to talk about. Get out.”

“You’re _leaving.”_ It bursts out of her, loud and pleading. “You’re taking Frankie with you and going where I don’t know and we’ll never see each other again, this time for good, please, Lisa, just let me talk to you for a minute, _please.”_ Her fists are clenched by her side, her breathing heavy, eyes wet. Her voice is soft and tremulous when she begs again. “Please.”

Lisa folds her arms, looking away, but she doesn't storm down the path to physically drag Kate off her property, so Kate considers that a good sign. “Fine. Talk.”

Kate takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she starts, and the words rush out like rivulets, everything that’s been building for years spilling out. “I’m sorry I was so blind in university and that I took you for granted. You were _everything_ to me and I was an idiot and I made so many assumptions. I’m sorry for what I said when I came over that day - for accusing you of things you didn’t do and for hurting you. I’m sorry I’ve spent half my life always expecting you to make the first move and save me instead of saving myself. I loved you for years and I never said, because I’m an idiot, and I’m a coward, and I lost ten years with you. Ten fucking years.” Kate scrubs a hand over her face, swallowing back her tears. “I love you. And I don’t think I can survive another ten without you.”

“You don’t think you can survive - fuck’s sake, Kate, that’s not my burden to bear,” Lisa snaps. Her hands are in her coat pockets; she glances up at the sky and exhales hard. “You love me? You loved me when we were dumb twenty-somethings in university, when I loved you back so much it broke me. You left me. You hurt me. Do you really think all the apologies you could make now could fix it all back?”

Of course not. Kate doesn’t think anything will ever fix this, fix _them._ They’re never, ever going to be Kate-and-Lisa the way they were a decade ago, ever again.

She should have chased after Lisa that day. _I love you, I love you, I love you. Stay with me, I want you, I have only ever wanted you._ It was true then and it’s been true always and she wasted so much fucking time that she’ll never get back and she will never get this back either. This is her goodbye. This is where it ends.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.” She squeezes her eyes shut and pulls her coat tighter around herself. “I’ll leave. I - “

Lisa doesn’t let her finish, hissing exasperatedly. She strides across the driveway to stand right in front of Kate, breathing in; when she looks up and meets Kate’s eyes she looks, for a moment, young, vulnerable, angry and hurting. “Damn it, Kate, I have never wanted you to leave me when you’re standing in front of me, okay? Fucking hell.” She dips her head, keeping her eyes down. “I missed you,” she says. “I missed you for years. I think I missed you the moment you first brought Richard to the Battle of the Bands because I knew I would be losing you. And I did.”

“I lost _you,”_ Kate sobs; the tears are streaming down her face and she doesn’t bother trying to stop them. “You _left._ You didn’t even say goodbye.”

“I’m sorry,” Lisa says softly. “I just couldn’t - it hurt, Kate, you don’t know how much. You wrote me about Richard proposing and sent your wedding invitation and I _couldn’t,_ Kate, I loved you so much and I thought you never loved me back - “

“That day at my wedding I wanted to be marrying you,” Kate says. Lisa stops short and glares at her, looking anguished and furious in equal measure. “God, Kate, then why the fuck did you say yes to Richard?”

“Because I was scared,” says Kate, and because Lisa is Lisa, because Lisa has always known her better than anyone in the world, she doesn’t need to ask why. She just laughs shortly, folding her arms. “And you’re not scared now?”

Kate shakes her head - she has to discuss the divorce with Richard, she has to figure out how to break this to Jamie, she’s upending her own life and she doesn’t know where she’s going from here and after years of desperately seeking stability and security it’s the most terrifying thing she’s ever done. “I am. I really, really am.”

Lisa arches an eyebrow. “Then what’s changed?”

Kate takes a slow breath and lifts her chin and wills her voice not to shake. “Because this time what scares me more than anything is the thought that you might walk away, this time for good, and I really will never see you again. I can’t survive that, Lisa. I can’t.”

They both fall silent. All Kate hears is birdcalls, the wind whistling around them, her own ragged breathing. Lisa doesn’t look at her, not even when she finally speaks once more. “Kate… it’s been ten years. Everything is different. Including you, and me.”

And Kate knows that; she knew that already, from the moment she met Lisa again in Flitcroft. Everything is different. Maybe too much for them to overcome.

Or is it?

Kate takes a chance. Makes the first move, for the first time. “Hi,” she says, pitching her voice higher to sound younger, trying her best to recall how she sounded at nineteen. “I’m Kate Barkley, nee Charles. I did my Education BA at the Met and graduated with first-class honours. I stay nearby along Wesson Close. Just a few minutes out.”

It’s not exactly the same, of course. But Lisa recognises that introduction; Kate knows she remembers that night as clearly as Kate does. She doesn’t take Kate’s outstretched hand but she does start to smile. “Kate,” she says, sounding exasperated, amused, wistful, longing, all of it at once. Kate smiles past her tears. “My floormates dragged me to the bar that night. I turned them down so many times before finally giving in. It was the best decision I made my entire university life.” She reaches out to cup Lisa’s cheek and Lisa doesn’t push her away. “I was gone for you the moment I first saw you on that stage, do you know? You were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. You still are.”

Lisa is smiling, and yes, everything is different, but that real, gorgeous smile, and the way it’s always made Kate feel, that isn’t. “Do you remember what I sang to you? The very last song? The band was so annoyed at me for changing it up out of nowhere.”

Kate blinks, startled, then shakes her head. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t remember,” she confesses. “I was just… looking at you.”

Lisa laughs, head thrown back, taking Kate’s breath away. Her eyes are shining. “Exactly,” she says. “That’s what I sang. ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’.” She breaks out a few lines of the song, sounding as incredible as Kate remembers her, and she can’t believe she went a decade not hearing that voice and she never wants to, not ever again. “All my life, Kate. I’ve only had eyes for you.”

She steps in close and embraces Kate and Kate falls into it without hesitation. Her body remembers how this feels; her heart has never forgotten. Lisa’s lips brush gently against her temple and Kate cries into her shoulder and can’t stop. “I loved you,” she says. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“You’re an idiot,” Lisa says fondly, and Kate chokes on a laugh. “I wasted so much time, Lisa. We could have been something. We could have been _everything._ Years and years ago. It was always you and it could always have been you.”

Lisa pulls back. Kisses Kate’s forehead, then her mouth, and it’s definitely not the first kiss they’ve ever shared, but it’s the first kiss that feels like it’s beginning something new. “We could have been,” Lisa agrees. “Or. We could be something now.” She tangles her fingers in Kate’s and squeezes tight. “What do you say?”

For a moment, Kate is nineteen again. Standing in a bar in London three days into university, not yet in love, not yet grown, watching a girl singing on stage and not taking her eyes off her.

But only for a moment. Then she’s in the driveway of a house in Flitcroft Garrison, older now, mistakes made, wrong turns taken. Everything is different except for that she has loved the girl in front of her for thirteen years and will love her and be loved back for the rest of her life. Thirteen years of hoping and wanting and waiting and being lost.

In Lisa’s arms, Kate knows she’s finally found.


End file.
